#he begins the babysitter interrogation now

[shiiikigami]

Toji-kun told me i needed to look after you

"hmmm... can you even look after your own self?"

[anonymous-dentist]

Here’s something interesting about the strip club interrogation: q!Roier knows that q!Quackity is innocent. He knows because he’s Quackity’s therapist, and because he’s purposefully let Quackity think that they’re friends, but they aren’t. Roier has been planning his revenge for weeks, biding his time, and yesterday was the perfect opportunity.

The eggs calmed things down a little. Roier didn’t actively talk about revenge as much outside of torture chamber construction. But here’s what he said to Quackity before the eggs even arrived, he said that Quackity would be his own downfall and that Roier would be watching the whole time. And Roier has been.

Roier started his psychology office to get gossip, and Quackity was one of his patients. He basically proved his innocence in that session, which Roier knows. He knows that Quackity isn’t actually going to kill any eggs because Quackity has told him as much.

But that doesn’t mean that Roier can’t take advantage of the situation, does it? Quackity is a desperate and grieving father here, and everyone is wary of him, especially now with the news that the eggs are all going to die and with people becoming worried about the Federation.

He tells q!Wilbur that Quackity wants the eggs dead. After that, Wilbur is especially unwilling to allow Quackity even near Tallulah. Roier helps Quackity and Gegg destroy Tallulah’s area and he gets away with it, Quackity being the only one to really get in any serious trouble because of it. Tallulah can’t see Quackity anymore “for her safety”, and that’s probably what Roier wanted because he knows just how much Quackity loves her. They destroyed her home just moments after Quackity admitted that he saw Tallulah as a daughter. Roier tells other fathers that Quackity is dangerous at the school, and they agree. And who would doubt Roier? He’s a good father and a good friend. He’s the babysitter. He flirts with everyone. Why wouldn’t you trust such a nice guy?

Quackity is alone.

And now in the interrogation, Roier stays silent as Quackity is essentially manipulated into a confession while drunk. Quackity is going to trial, and he’s going to lose.

Roier admitted it himself later in that stream, this was just part of his revenge against Quackity. He wants to see Quackity miserable. He wants him to feel as desperate as Roier did when he was betrayed by him, and Roier probably won’t stop until Quackity has dug his own grave and lied in it.

He said that Quackity would be the one to ruin himself, and, really, is he wrong? To everyone but Roier and his audience, it does look like this is all Quackity’s fault. Even Quackity probably thinks so.

If this is the beginning of Roier’s plans against Quackity, the guy who didn’t even kill him, it’s gonna be rough seeing what he does to Spreen.

[sumicchin]

CHIMES OF THE HEART

❇ a wind breaker (satoru nii) reader insert.

CHAPTER 3

Sakura curses the world for not having the ability to teleport people in and out of his room. (2.5k words)

content warnings: female reader, awkward teenagers, cussing

Cafe Pothos was a safe haven for the students of Furin, and much to Kotoha's dismay, it often becomes a makeshift meeting place for very rowdy delinquent business.

The girl found herself cleaning up the tables as Umemiya and Hiragi talked by the counter, glasses seemingly looking like alcohol but actually filled with water (for dramatic purposes, Ume says).

"You were lookin' at the girl strangely earlier, 'sup with that?" Hiragi asks, snapping his friend out of a daze.

Umemiya hums as he puts down his beverage, "She looked familiar, is all."

"But we just met 'er."

"Maybe she appeared in a dream," Umemiya laughs.

Hiragi doesn't dismiss his friend though...he knows better than to doubt Bofurin's leader. He never declares something he's unsure of.

"Well, we can fish out information once the girl's feeling better." Hiragi says as he takes out a gas-kun10, feeling his stomach flip again.

Why are you two making it sound like she's a wanted criminal up for interrogation, Kotoha thinks as she's wiping the tables.

❋❋❋❋❋❋❋❋❋❋

Two of probably the most awkward people in Japan stare each other down as if they're relaying some passage about the secrets of the world. 

Sakura could only think of unintelligible phrases in his mind, never had he locked gazes with the opposite sex this long. He tried to open his mouth but clammed up immediately, not knowing what to say in the first place.

Should he greet her or something? Talk about the weather? Or what about asking about how she's feeling at the moment.

Nah scrap that, he'll do the most Sakura thing ever.

"Are you fucking done sleeping?"

He fucked up, he thinks.

He earns a weird glare and just wishes he could die in a hole. Well, it isn't as bad as he thought it was, imagine if Suo was here. The girl groans and musters all her remaining strength to sit up, stressing Sakura out for the nth time that day.

"W-what are you doing?! You're supposed to be resting!"

"Need to go somewhere..." She struggled but soon was able to stand up, now noticing the change of clothes. The top is fleece with long sleeves, and her pants are made of cotton as well as socks. She's unfamiliar with it, but she often sees girls of her age wear the same thing when she visits the market.

The boy immediately regrets his very poor choice of words and aggression, dragging the sluggish girl by her arm back to the futon. "You can't go out, I promised to look after you!"

The girl just looks at him with annoyance.

"I don't need a babysitter..."

Sakura for some reason felt like he was dealing with his doppelganger, and now he understands how big of a saint the people around him are for being patient with him.

He thinks to himself how would his friends respond in this situation. How were they able to show kindness and patience towards someone like him? He calms himself and looks the girl straight in the eyes...

Face us when you're talking.

Sakura takes a deep breath, clearing his mind of aggression. "Look...I don't know what you've been through, and I won't force you to talk about it...but I ain't an enemy." The girl remains quiet, but her face is now free from turmoil.

Not having the energy to fight back, she could only respond with droopy eyes and a bit of a slur to her words, "You look very kind to me...no need to prove it." The boy heats up and starts yelling incoherent sentences, saying he's a very violent delinquent who's far from nice. Was he really becoming soft?

She chuckled as she sat down, taking the futon to her hands and begins folding it, "Thank you for letting me stay here, but you don't want a criminal inside your house."

Sakura scoffs and scratches the back of his neck, trying to formulate a sentence that would make her feel better for beating up people the other day. "Those guys were traffickers, you just gave them what they deserved." And that cops barely do jackshit in this town, apparently. This earns him an audible 'Oh' from the girl, now plopping the neatly folded futon in place. Sakura could only hope that she didn't smell drool from the bedding.

He notices her form relaxing, body now facing his. Not that he thinks violence should be normalized, but he swore to himself that those scumbags had it coming.

The two just stare at each other for a while, waiting who's going to continue the conversation. Unlike his conversations with Kotoha who usually takes the lead (and embarrasses the hell out of him), the current situation is calling for him to take the initiative.

"Just, stay here until you feel better...I don't mind," he feels his face heat up when he noticed the girl staring at him like he's part of the seven wonders of the world. "Whachu lookin' at?"

She shook her head, and saw her smile for the first time, "You're the handsomest person I've seen."

Sakura almost went into cardiac arrest.

He clutched his chest, feeling his chest beating erratically. He might be the one who needs to rest rather than the girl.

After a few seconds, Sakura felt himself calm down and think clearly. He concludes that this girl is dangerous, physically and mentally.

Now regained his footing, Sakura clears his throat and politely (surprisingly) asks for her name. He sees her hesitate for a moment, but one look at Sakura's honest eyes reassured her.

"(F/n)."

I just asked a girl her name, Sakura inwardly celebrates.

❋❋❋❋❋❋❋❋❋❋

Sakura sets up the rice cooker that Kotoha left earlier, (F/n) watching as he takes out the ingredients. "Sorry this is where you had to rest...it was the closest from where you fainted." He takes out the bag of rice and dumps it in the pot, obviously not knowing how this works since he forgot to ask Kotoha for instructions.

(F/n) watches in dismay, grabbing the ingredients from the struggling boy. "I can cook," she just saved the rice grains and bits of meat from being turned into a disastrous meal. The girl grew up in a very secluded area with little to no technology, so she too unfortunately had no idea how to operate the machine, but one can hope to work a miracle. She asks the boy where to rinse the rice, to which he points at the sink. Back home, she had to walk to a well to gather water for everything. Having everything in one room is very convenient.

Sakura watched as (F/n) worked in the supposed kitchen of his apartment (just a sink). He observed that she seemed very used to doing chores, and he remembered what Suo said earlier.

Perhaps she works at an izakaya...or even a brothel.

It would make sense that she ran away from...that establishment, but he knew better than to assume.

"Regardless of what you say, I think it's comforting and warm here," she says while rinsing the rice and vegetables found in the bag Sakura was rummaging a while ago, "I feel safe already." Sakura pouts, fiddling with the rice cooker.

The ingredients were for chicken congee, so she'll do just that. "What was it like in your home anyways?" He asks, watching as the girl returns with rice, ginger, and chicken broth inside the pot. "Old, to say the least," she replies.

They both fiddle with the machine, taking turns acting like apes and eventually, they get the thing working. "I hope this actually works, I only saw this in a magazine," (F/n) recalls a page she read before.

The rice cooker, an asian home essential!

She proceeds to watch the machine intensely like a caveman discovering fire for the first time. Sakura saw his phone screen light up next to him, seeing tons of unseen messages from everyone. He unintentionally ghosted them from being too nervous earlier.

Nirei

DID SOMETHING HAPPEN TO BOTH OF YOU?!

Sent a sticker [faint].

Suo

Is everything okay, Sakura?

You haven't answered our messages.

Umemiya

I know you get nervous around girls, but nii-san knows you got this! 😎👍

Kotoha

Don't break the rice cooker please!!!!

and lmk how she's doing!

Tsubaki

You better not be doing anything to her~

Kaji

be back tom to get my hoodie cuz they used it as her pillow

Sugishita

are u dead

Why the hell was Sugishita messaging him was his first thought, but he slowly replied to everyone's message and told them everything's all good, with the minor exception of his heart rate.

Sakura

everythingz fine sheesh

you guys can all visit tomorrow

were making congee right now

oh and her name is (f/n)

He decided to be brave today and use the camera function of his phone, taking a picture of the girl watching the rice cooker.

Cute, he thought while blushing to himself.

He sends the picture to his friends. Not even a second passed, he already received tons of replies.

Nirei

Cute!

Sent a sticker [love].

Kotoha

Ask her if she's feeling better!

Tell her the clothes I brought are for her btw!

Suo

She's like a child watching the rice cooker ^^

Tsugeura

TELL HER TO EAT TONS!!

Sent a sticker [eat].

Umemiya

Tell (F/n) I said hi!!!!

I will also bring her some of my special soup tomorrow!!!!

Hiragi

Make sure she's nourished well.

Kiryu

Sent a sticker [cute].

I left some medicine make sure she drinks it (⁠ ⁠ꈍ⁠ᴗ⁠ꈍ⁠)

Tsubaki

CAN I VISIT RN???

PWEASEEE!!!! 🥺

Are these guys seriously gonna raid my house tomorrow?

Sakura feels (F/n) sit next to him and is now staring at his phone, letting out an audible gasp of amazement. "That's a real phone, right?" He nods, but more importantly, almost combusts from how close she is to him. This girl is going to give him a stroke.

"You haven't seen one?" Sakura thinks, but he's one to talk since he literally got his phone pretty recently. The girl next to him shakes her head, "Only in the magazines and books I've read."

"W-wanna use it?" He offers it to her, but she frantically shakes her head, "No no, I'm good with watching. I don't want to accidentally break your stuff..."

Socially challenged meets technologically challenged, the saga.

She's pretty cute like this...

(F/n) looks at him like a kicked puppy, "You're probably thinking I'm an idiot or something." Sakura immediately dismisses her and says he was basically the same before he arrived in town. He thanks the gods for giving him Nirei and Suo.

The girl mumbles an apology, obviously bothered based on the expression she's giving. "I'm just, overwhelmed is all...it's my first time out in a city, and I don't know anyone nor have anything on me."

Sakura knows exactly how it feels.

"Believe it or not, I had nothing before coming to this town." He recalls his first day, saving Kotoha and the rest was history. "I just beat up some guys and suddenly, I'm surrounded by all these people."

"Then they probably saw something in you."

Sakura looks at her, "Y-you aren't the first person to say that."

(F/n) smiles, "I can tell you're willing to go through lengths for the people you care."

Sakura gasps, telling her she's not making sense while stuttering. Facing her companion who's seemingly cosplaying a tomato, she lets out another chuckle, "It's a secret power of mine."

"S-shut up. First you were a ghost, and now you're acting like a psychic." (F/n) laughs, having too much fun teasing the boy next to her. "What's up with you earlier anyways?"

The girl stops laughing, fidgeting in her seat. "Ah... it's a long story." Sakura raises his brow, finally having the leverage over her, "I-it's not like I killed someone! Those guys suddenly came at me...and stuff happened." She starts telling him about what happened afterwards with matching gestures— searching for shelter, admitting to stealing a few things, and the encounter with the Furin students.

"So... I'm really grateful that I get to recover before I set out."

Well...that didn't answer anything, Sakura thinks. Now impatient, he starts taking the lead to make the conversation fruitful.

"Where do you need to go?"

"Huh?"

"I said, where do you need to go? I'll help you out."

"Some place called—"

 

The rice cooker dings and (F/n) whips her head towards the machine. "Oh, the congee is ready!" 

❋❋❋❋❋❋❋❋❋❋

After a silent dinner, the boy refreshed himself and prepared to head for bed.

But he can't.

Not when he keeps constantly reminding himself that he's sleeping in close proximity to a girl. Said girl also was feeling restless that night, back facing Sakura as she sat in front of the curtainless large window with the moonlight illuminating the room.

Sakura was very curious about her. The damned congee machine cut her off while she was talking, and he's still trying to grasp at straws on why she's such a capable fighter. For now, he's letting her have a moment of peace. She hasn't uttered a word since dinner, did Sakura offend her somehow? Consumed by his thoughts, he was suddenly pulled out of a haze once he heard (F/n) mention his last name.

"Do you live alone, Sakura?" He takes a moment before answering, letting out  a hum and saying that it's been like that since he could remember. When was the last time he spent the night with someone else's presence? "But you have your friends, right?" He pauses for a bit, looking at the girl's back as if she had two heads. It's exactly what plagues him, the thought of letting people see through him...but he's learning to grow past that. 

He had friends that constantly remind him that he belongs.

"How does it feel..." the girl trails, turning to face Sakura, "to have friends you can rely on?" He notices her watery eyes, yet none of her tears fall. Sakura thinks back to the time he felt like he had no place in this world. It was painful, having to reject the kindness that others have shown him before. But as time passed, he grew longing for this interaction and found himself enjoying everyone's presence.

When did he start to feel sentimental?

The boy answers with a small "It's ok," while avoiding her gaze, but his thoughts say otherwise.

They mean the world to me, is what he truly meant.

(F/n) smiles, "Will you...let me indulge in something like that too?"

He goes silent, not knowing how to respond at first.

Sakura gets up from his previous fetal position to sit next to the girl.

They both watch the moon in comfortable silence.

"Stop acting like a cryptic then." Confused, (F/n) looks at Sakura and asks what he meant by it. He clicks his tongue, muttering something along the lines of 'Are you slow?'.

The room is barely lit by the moon, but it's enough to see his cheeks that were dusted with pink.

"As your friend, you gotta let me know what's on your mind before I can help you. I can't read minds, unlike you." The girl chuckles at Sakura's words. "So, where do you have to go?"

"Oh, a town called Makochi, I think..."

Sakura stares at the girl, with the emptiest expression he's ever pulled.

"What's with the face?" (F/n) grimaces, all of her comfort thrown out of the window.

This girl's gotta be pulling my leg.

"Can't believe I got myself involved with you."

need to remind myself to make a masterlist ww

[bizaar]

Cruel Summer - Part 8

First - Previous - Next

pairings: Eddie Munson x fem!reader

summary: After breaking up, you and Eddie do your best to soldier on with your lives, but you slowly begin to discover that there is a stronger line of connection keeping you together than just history…

word count: 12k

warnings: swearing, mentions of Chrissy's death, fluff, just really saccharine fluff, sappy love, if you know you know

A.N.: Babysitter!reader part eight, newly formatted to make jumping between chapters easier! Mean!Girl Steve is in full force, and I kind of love it, Dustin finally learns the truth.

When you finally get back to Benny’s, the parking lot is full, indicating that with the passing of mid-morning into afternoon, the masses have finally descended.

The diner is swamped with regulars and newcomers, a whole host of the same onlookers you’d seen standing around gawping back at the trailer park. They’d been staring at you then, trying to get a good look while you were being forcibly removed from the Munson trailer and unceremoniously interrogated, and they’re staring at you now, whispering amongst themselves as you push through the doors and stalk across the diner floor.

Your coworker is running back and forth like a freshly decapitated chicken, berating you for leaving her to fend for herself, but you don’t stand around long enough to listen to her dig into you for abandoning your post.

You’ve wasted enough time as it is. 

You’d been detained by the Hawkins’ boys in blue for the better part of an hour, and the walk back had been unceremoniously long. With the weight of Wayne’s money sitting heavy in your pocket and his words even heavier on your shoulders, you’d walked, repeating them to yourself like they were the lyrics to a song you were trying to memorize, a desperate attempt to ward off the paralyzing fear they stirred in you.

You said them over and over again until that fear subsided and gave way to something more grounded, over and over until it was all you could think: Find Eddie, get out of town, don’t come back.

You’re muttering the words to yourself as you slip into the hallway between the kitchen and the dining room, where a short row of beat-up lockers stand beside the punch clock.

There you find Earl, looming in the doorway behind you with his thick arms crossed over his barrel-chested form, staring tiny holes into your back as you snatch your things from the locker you’d stashed them in that morning – jean jacket, bag, car keys, find Eddie, get out of town, don’t come back.

“– Are you even listening to me?” Earl snaps.

You twist at the waist to blink at him, stupidly you imagine because you had not heard a word he’d just said, so caught in the mire of your thoughts as you were. 

“No,” You answer honestly, followed directly by, “I’m leaving.”

The tone of Earl’s flesh deepens until he’s turned nearly purple and is all but frothing at the mouth as you skip back through the diner. He follows, as any self-respecting employer would, you imagine, hurling threats at your back.

You’ve already made it to the door by the time he manages to get out from behind the counter, making one last-ditch effort to stop you.    

“You step out that door and you’re done here, Missy!” He shouts.

The proposed loss of your income does nothing to deter you. 

You don’t miss a step as you shove the door open with a familiar chiming bell that you imagine you will be hearing for the last time.

Fine — Good riddance. 

Your triumphant exit is, however, not punctuated by the cheers and swelling music you’d always imagined it would be. It is, in fact, wholly uninspired as you leap down off the curb with Earl still shouting at you how you best not come crawling back, blah blah blah, and make your way across the lot to your little Toyota, left all but abandoned.

It is only after you slide into the driver's seat and jam the keys into the ignition that you discover, much to your chagrin, at some point over the last couple of hours your car’s battery has died.

Just fucking typical.

You don’t have time to run around trying to find someone to jump it for you, so you shoulder your bag and bid a silent farewell to your trusty little car before starting up the road towards town at a swift jog.

Somewhere in the back of your mind, you know it is going to be a problem when eventually you find Eddie and have to figure out how you’re going to get him out of Hawkins without the use of a car, but you’ll just have to cross that bridge when you come to it. 

You’ll get this done if it kills you, one Sisyphean hurdle at a time.

Of course, you have no earthly idea where you are even meant to start looking for Eddie, and it is only by sheer dumb luck that you somehow miraculously find yourself headed past Adam’s house.

Miraculous, considering you’d only cut into the neighborhood in a panicked attempt to avoid the cop car you’d seen nestled in its speed trap on the shoulder of the road, but all the more so because, like a stroke of divine intervention, you’ve somehow found yourself stumbling across an honest to God, Corroded Coffin jam session.

What are the odds? 

Like nothing has changed and somehow the encroaching cloud of doom has not yet reached this part of town, Jeff, Adam, and Gareth are all there, standing huddled together in the open garage like they were waiting for you.

The coincidence of it all drives you a little crazy, especially considering Eddie is not with them. You can’t help the pang of bitter disappointment you feel as you have to remind yourself it was never going to be that easy – nothing with Eddie ever is.

The band, sans its frontman, stands staring at you wide-eyed and gawping like they’re seeing a ghost as you bolt up the driveway, shouting their names and waving your arms for their attention as you come screeching to a halt.

Your body is surging with enough adrenaline to almost make you forget how your lungs are burning. You’ve done more running today than you have all year, and your body is not happy about it – funny how quickly you get out of shape once things like regularly mandated physical education become thing of the past.

“Whoa, holy shit, Dude!” Jeff squeaks out, stumbling over your name and the chord of his electric guitar as he moves towards you, “H-hey! It’s been a minute,”

You don’t let him finish, you don’t have time for a game of catch-up. 

“Where’s Eddie?” you demand, well aware of how you are starting to sound like a broken record even if only to yourself. “Have you seen him?”

The question seems to shock them. Adam and Gareth exchange nervous glances, meanwhile Jeff makes a harsh sound in the back of his throat that is a little closer to disgust than you like and recoils like you’d threatened to slap him.

The reaction might have confused you if not for the fact that you are well aware of the way he’s always had a big crush on you and the tension it has created between him and Eddie as a result.

You are not in the least bit surprised to see that it has not changed, but you have neither the time nor the patience to be nice to him about it.

You don’t care about Jeff’s feelings, you only care about finding Eddie. 

Gareth has to elbow him in the ribs to stop him from saying something snide as he answers you.  

“Not since Hellfire last night–” He begins, lamely fumbling for the excuse he doesn’t get the chance to trot out before Jeff cuts him off with a scoff.

“I saw him.” He says matter of factly, garnering horrified reactions from his friends.

Gareth’s eyes widen as his head whips around so fast you half expect to see it spin all the way around.

He and Adam are staring daggers, silently willing him to shut up, and suddenly you get a strange, sinking sense of betrayal like they are grappling with something big and unwieldy that is not for your eyes.

You swallow it, you can process it later if your feelings are still hurt.  

“You did?” You gasp. 

Jeff nods.

“Dude— don’t.” Adam hisses.

He narrows his eyes and shoots Adam an unimpressed look.

“What? It’s not like she isn’t gonna find out.” He says, sounding almost like a mocking reference to a conversation they’ve had before. Adam glares at him but says nothing, and Jeff looks almost smug as he turns back to regard you, “I saw Eddie,”

Your heart is in your throat and you can’t quite decide if it’s for excitement or nerves. You’re practically vibrating for it and you have to ball your hands into fists to stop yourself from grabbing Jeff by the front of his shirt and shaking him.

“Where?” 

He shrugs.

“In the school parking lot after the game. He was headed out with…”

Jeff trails off under the chorus of Adam and Gareth swatting at him and telling him to shut him up. It sets the band to bickering aggressively and your skin to crawl.

You can’t stop yourself from bouncing up and down in a near panic as you try to reign their attention back in.

“You guys, come on, please focus! I have to find Eddie, it’s an emergency!” 

It is enough to silence them.

“Jeff — you saw Eddie in the parking lot after the game…” You prompt him.  

After a moment's hesitation, Jeff averts his gaze and clears his throat. It causes your stomach to churn with dread. Despite how fairly certain you are you already know what he’s going to say, you suddenly aren’t sure you want to hear him say it.

He nods in a way that is almost halfway sheepish, like he’s only just realized what it is he’s about to say and who he is about to say it to.

“... I saw him getting into the van with Chrissy Cunningham… you know, that cheerleader?” 

Bingo.

Stupidly, it hits you like a fist to the gut, winding you ever so slightly.

You suppose you already knew that Eddie and Chrissy had been together last night in some capacity — how else would she have ended up dead on his living room floor — but in the midst of the morning’s panic, you hadn’t allowed yourself to consider the reasons why they were together, and now your insides are burning as your mind races with the suggestion of hideous possibility. 

You swallow hard and clench your teeth – it’s stupid to be jealous of a dead girl, you know this, and yet…?

Gareth pipes up then, grabbing your attention before you can go down the tantalizing road of bitter self-destruction by imagining Eddie and Chrissy together in any kind of intimate capacity.  

“What’s going on?” He asks tentatively, “Why do you need to find Eddie so bad?”

You open your mouth to speak before you’ve decided what you should or should not tell them about what you know. Do you tell them the truth or do you make up a sanitized version of things to try and save face, to protect Eddie?

You’re suddenly so conflicted that you feel as if your throat has filled with cotton, rendering you speechless. 

It takes you half a minute to finally force something out, settling on, “He’s in trouble.” 

Which, in the grand scheme of things is a relatively banal statement. Eddie is always in some kind of trouble, but you hope your presence is enough to clue the band in on the gravity of the situation as you swallow hard against the tightness of your throat and the black pit of jealousy forming in your stomach. 

Gareth’s brows come together over his eyes. 

“What kind of trouble?”

The worst kind.

You shake your head, partially because you don’t know where to begin but mostly to try and banish the image of Chrissy’s gaunt, screaming face from where it has shouldered its way to the front of your mind.

You set your jaw and breathe out a slow, shaky breath, but you don’t get the chance to gather your thoughts before they’re scattered to the wind again. 

“Oh, shit…” Adam mumbles, “Is it that bad?”

You don’t answer, though only because you don’t expressly know how to answer. It is that bad, and it’s worse.

After a long moment of silence, he blows out a harsh breath and shrugs.

“You know, you’re not the only person looking for Eddie,” Adam says, sending a pang of white-hot fear lancing through your midsection for what that could possibly suggest, until, “Dustin Henderson called about twenty minutes back asking basically the same thing.”

Your heart leaps into your throat as a cool wave of relief washes over you. In spite of yourself, you feel a bright and dangerous hope welling in your chest, banishing the black pit swirling there.

Dustin! Of course, wonderful, sweet, amazing Dustin would know where to look!  

The bright feeling lasts only the briefest of moments before it is dashed to oblivion because Gareth is giving you a very tense look, like he’s busy putting the pieces of a puzzle to paint a terrible picture of the truth.

“This doesn’t have anything to do with that girl who got killed… does it?” He asks.

It’s shocking, like the clanging of a bell ringing in your ears and deafening you.

You feel your heart seize in your chest and are aware of how your jaw falls open ever so slightly, betraying any discretion you might have hoped to keep regarding the situation at hand. 

Trust Gareth to always see straight through to the greater underlying truth. 

Adam and Jeff exchange nervous glances as you fail to answer. You feel suddenly very small under their collective gaze as words fail you, and all you can do is stare back at them. 

Unfortunately, your silence speaks for itself, and you watch Gareth’s jaw flex as the gravity of the situation finally starts to sink in.

You suspect they must have imagined it was just the typical Eddie trouble and no real emergency. What are you if not their friend’s ex-girlfriend, banging down the door and demanding to know where he is after he goes off with some cheerleader for God knows what – you think you can probably make a pretty good guess for what — don’t go there, don’t do that to yourself…

It makes sense that they would close rank around their friend, “bro-code” being what it is – it’s bullshit, but in the fucked up logic of the masculine brain, you suppose it’s bullshit that makes sense.

It doesn’t mean you have to like it. 

“…It’s Chrissy…isn’t it?” Gareth asks then, his voice trembling and so soft you would not have heard him had he not been standing so close, “The dead girl?” 

The silence that falls over the garage is deafening.

Your stomach bottoms out and you are struck with a wave of cold nausea. You wire your jaw shut, suddenly reluctant to answer on the off chance that despite being Eddie’s friends, somehow their collective consciences lead them to the same terrible conclusion you are certain everyone else in this backwater town is going to jump to. 

You would protect him from that if you could, in spite of everything, be his shield, but your body betrays you, and you’re nodding before you can stop yourself.

They react with varying degrees of horror, faces blanche, swears are uttered, Adam covers his face in his hands and you can hear him muttering “Jesus Christ” to himself over and over. It leaves you wondering if he’s swearing or praying.

Gareth takes you by the arm, then, and leads you away from the cloud of hysteria you have created among them, back towards the drum set crouching in the shadows of the garage. 

He doesn’t immediately speak to you, he can hardly even look at you, which is not expressly fair considering you’re only the messenger. The color has drained from his face, and for half a second you think maybe he’s about to keel over or throw up, or something.

After a very long moment, he finally makes himself breathe out a harsh, shaky sigh. His hands are shaking as he cards them through his hair – he glances back at his friends, at his feet, and then at you, like he’s trying to decide what to say. 

You can’t blame him. What does someone say to something like that?

You imagine if you hadn’t been so single-minded in finding him you would be reeling too – you’d seen Chrissy’s body, afterall.

“He-he didn’t…? Fuck– did Eddie—”

“Stop.” the word wrenches itself from somewhere deep within you in a breathless gasp. You can’t bear to hear him say it, “Don’t you dare ask me that…”

Gareth sets his jaw and levels you with a strange, hard look before finally giving a short nod. You’re not sure what it means, but you don’t like the jagged edge of the way he’s looking at you. 

You do your best to steady yourself, but your voice is trembling as you speak.

“Look, I know this seems really bad, I get it, but… but Christ, G, this is Eddie we’re talking about, okay? It’s Eddie. We know he’s not like that, he would never do something like this… I mean, come on … he won’t even kill a spider.”

Gareth is shaking his head, but somehow you don’t think he disagrees with you.

It is, after all, a point of favored teasing among the group – Gareth in particular. Big tough Eddie Munson is scared shitless of spiders … and all flying bugs, you might add, but now is neither the time nor the place to offer that little tidbit of information.

Still, your brain offers you the rather unhelpful mental image of Eddie last January, leaping up out of bed and literally sprinting to the safety of the trailer’s front porch, where he’d stood shivering in his boxers as you quickly relocated a particularly large wolf spider from the nest it had made in a dark corner of his bedroom.

You wish you were back there now, arguing with Eddie as he refused to be coaxed back into the trailer, despite the subzero temperatures, instead of standing here in this terrible moment, wondering where in the hell he could possibly be.

“What happened?” Gareth sniffs, squeezing his eyes shut like he hates to ask but he has to know.

You cross your arms over your chest and cast your gaze down to your grease-stained keds.  

“I don’t know,” You mumble, “But it’s only gonna get a lot worse if I don’t find Eddie right now.”

A sticky silence blooms between you, but it barely has a moment to settle before it is whisked away.

“Uh oh,” Adam calls from the front of the garage. “Jerk alert,”

“Jesus, what are they doing here?”

A cursory glance toward the front of the garage reveals Jeff and Adam staring at something out on the street.

You follow their gaze to see the butched-out Jeep Cherokee that has pulled up to the curb and your heart seizes in your chest as you come to recognize it and the great many basketball players that begin to spill out of it – the Hawkins Tigers, with Jason Carver at the lead. This is bad, this is very bad.

Since graduating, you don’t keep up with the interconnected gossip of the Hawkins social elite, like who is dating who, but it occurs to you all too late that you are, in fact, very well aware that Chrissy Cunningham had been Jason Carver’s girlfriend.

At least until last night.

Adrenaline spikes through your limbs and you’re struck with the same nagging urge to run that you’d woken up with that morning. 

If Jason is here, then it can only mean that news of her death has reached him, though more importantly, it means Jason knows who Chrissy was with when she died. 

You have to find Eddie, now.

Before you can even think to move, Gareth grabs you by the sleeve of your jacket and drags you deeper into the garage, leading you to the wall where a dozen boxes are stacked up against a disused side door.

He begins pulling at them, doing his best to dislodge the cardboard barrier standing between you and your escape. He speaks with a hushed urgency as he works, looking back over his shoulder at the scene unfolding at the mouth of the garage.

“Go.” He says, wrenching the door open as far as it will budge, “Find Dustin, if anyone’s gonna have a line on Eddie, it’ll be him. We’ll try to buy you some time.”

It’s a tight squeeze, but you hold your breath and manage to push through with the meager sacrifice of two buttons from the front of your dress and only the slightest amount of scraping.

Before you can slip out the other side, Gareth catches you by the wrist and says your name.

His brows are pulled tight over his eyes as you glance back at him. 

“He didn’t mean it.” He says thickly – you don’t have to ask to know who he means, “Whatever he did with… with Chrissy?”

Gareth trails off then, shaking his head like he isn’t sure he ought to even say her name, let alone try and make excuses for whatever did or did not happen. 

You dismiss the notion with a quick shake of your head. The jocks are getting closer, and you’re running out of time to escape. 

“It doesn’t matter–”

He cuts you off.

“No, it does. Just… just let me say it, in case he’s too chicken shit to do it himself.” He huffs, “Eddie’s been fucked up over you all year, okay? Trust me, whatever he did, whatever happened between you? He’s killing himself over it… he still loves you, Man, he’s just too stupid to do anything about it.”   

You swallow hard to try and stop any kind of reaction from spilling out of you.

You don’t have time to fall apart, but the coincidence that he would use those exact words? He still loves you? What could possibly have possessed Gareth to tell you that, why now?

How much had Eddie told them about what he’d said to you that night last August?

Before you have time to consider the notion, to muster any kind of proper feeling about it, Gareth pushes you through the door and shuts it behind you.

You stagger gracelessly into the grass on the other side of the wall, only just managing to stay on your feet as you hear the telltale scrape and thump of Gareth putting the boxes back in place.

You’re off and running again as the first of the jock’s voices reach you, body surging with adrenaline despite the way your legs are trembling as you go. 

Find Dustin, you tell yourself, You’ve got to find Dustin.

+++

This is the fourth time Dustin has tried you at home over the last hour, and yet again the phone rings and rings and endlessly rings with no sign of picking up.

Behind him, Max and Robin pace back and forth, dialing every number they can get their hands on, attempting to oh so casually inquire after Eddie to any of the citizens of Hawkins who might happen to have some inkling of where he could be.

So far no dice.

Not even getting Adam on the phone had drummed up any kind of result, except for Dustin having to make a very rushed, very lame excuse about why he couldn’t stay on the phone and reminisce about the previous night’s awesome session.

It had been awesome, and under normal circumstances, he would have loved the opportunity to relive the glory of Vecna’s defeat, but Dustin has to find Eddie as soon as humanly possible, and before he can do that, he has to get a hold of you.

Both of those things are seeming more and more improbable an outcome as the minutes tick past.

The phone continues to ring, and Dustin watches Steve with a misplaced vehemence as he skirts around the floor, assisting and suggesting and being an overall excellent Family Video employee like he was going for goddamn employee of the month or something.

He is very obviously doing everything he possibly can to avoid assisting in the search for Eddie, and it is very un-Steve of him.

In Dustin’s opinion, he is being very uncool about this whole thing, about looking for Eddie but also about getting you on the phone.

“You’re wasting your time,” he’d said the second time Dustin had tried your number, in that same cryptic way he always referred to you when the subject of Eddie came up.

Dustin had no patience for it today. 

“Steve, quit being such a douche,” He’d said, hurrying to finish his thought before Steve could get pissed about it, “I’m telling you — she’s good at this stuff, finding lost things? You don’t have to be her friend, just try to be nice to her for once, okay? She’s our ace in the hole.”

To his credit, Steve just huffed out an annoyed breath and rolled his eyes, which was a win considering he was within his rights to bite Dustin’s head off over the insult.

“Not if the lost thing is something she doesn’t want to find.” He'd muttered.  

“What does that even mean?”

But by then a slender brunette had walked in through the door and Steve had completely lost interest in the conversation.

The phone is still ringing, and Dustin has to remind himself for the hundredth time that it does not automatically indicate that you’ve been arrested, as Max suggested.

You’re probably at work, even though your mean coworker had already informed him that you’d gone running out the front door without a word, like a bat out of hell — headed for the trailer park, if I had to guess, she’d said.

It makes Dustin’s stomach curl to imagine it – you, mixed up in whatever weirdness was going on down there, with Eddie – his two missing friends.  

It makes no goddamn sense.

On the ride to Family Video, Dustin and Max had unanimously agreed that said weirdness very likely had something to do with the Upsidedown, which stresses Dustin out to no end, considering the fact that half of their party is presently all the way in California and unable to help if another gate has cropped up; not to mention how tirelessly he has worked to keep you safely removed from all that, and yet there they were, and here you were not. 

The phone is still ringing.

With a dejected sigh, Dustin resigns himself to the fact that you’re still not home. Just as his fingers have come down to rest on the switch hook, ready to end the connection, there is suddenly the telltale click of the receiver picking up.

Dustin’s heart leaps to his throat as he snatches his hand away from the phone and finally — finally, your voice comes through the line. You answer, loud and breathless, like you’ve just finished running for your life as you all but shout into the mouthpiece. 

“Eddie!?” You gasp at the same moment that Dustin bleats your name with a similar fervor. 

It confuses him, though not nearly as much as the rush of relief that floods your voice as you course correct and immediately begin speaking a mile a minute.

“Dustin!” You shout, “Oh, thank God – Did you find him? Have you heard from Eddie?” 

It leaves him more than just a little bit stunned.

“No, not since last night…” he hears you heave an overloud sigh of frustration and is quick to continue in a juvenile hope of pleasing you, “B-but we’re calling around and asking everybody we can think of…” and then a thought worms its way to the front of Dustin’s mind, “Hold on a second, how do you know Eddie—”

You don’t let him finish. Over the phone, Dustin can hear a cacophony of crashing and banging, the rustle of clothing and you swearing harshly under your breath, like you’re busy ransacking your apartment.

“Where are you right now? Are you home?”

“No, I’m at Family Video, Max and I—”

“Don’t move. I’ll be there in five minutes.” 

And then there is the hard clang of the receiver being slammed into place followed by the monotonous droning of the dial tone, and just like that you’re gone.  

Dustin drops the phone from his ear and stares at the receiver as he tries to understand what the hell just happened.

You’re very clearly not sitting in a jail cell, that much is clear, but somehow you’re already out there looking for Eddie?

He can’t decide if it’s fortuitous or just plain bizarre.

It’s fortuitous because it means he doesn’t have to waste any time trying to convince you to help, but it’s wholly bizarre because up until this point Dustin had been under the impression that you don’t even know Eddie.

How did you know he was in trouble? And why do you sound so stressed about it?

Dustin supposes it doesn’t really matter if the means add up to his intended end, but it’s just one more thing in a long list of things stacking up to make today unbearably weird.

His confusion does not go unnoticed.

“Hey, what happened?” Robin asks softly, craning her neck towards Dustin and holding the phone just far enough away from her ear so as not to mix conversations. 

He blinks at her as he tries and fails to untangle it himself, then shrugs and puts his phone back on the hook.

He explains as much as he knows: you’re on your way over, you’ll be here in five minutes.

It’s closer to ten by the time he finally spies you through the front windows, darting across the street and only just avoiding the passing traffic as you cross.

You’re flushed and jumpy as you push through the door with a loud clanging of the bell.

The sound of your arrival brings Steve whipping around a shelf from the romance section, eyes bright with possibility and diving into his bullshit spiel before he sees who has come in through the door.

“Hey there, welcome to Family — oh, it’s just you.” His face visibly falls as he turns on his heel and heads back towards the counter with a sigh, “Dustin, your babysitter’s here.”

He says it’s like a dirty word, gesturing to you with a flippant jerk of his thumb that makes Dustin’s skin feel hot and prickly with indignation – he’d told him to be nice.

Dustin knows very well that you and Steve don’t like each other, and he doesn’t precisely know why, except that it has something to do with something that happened back in High School, before Steve came around and joined the team.

He has tried and failed on many occasions to plead his case, to convince you that Steve is not all that bad, but you would not relent in your opinion of him.

You’re speaking before Dustin can make any sort of effort to defend you. 

“Eat shit, Steve,” you huff, taking the words right out of his mouth and looking very agitated as you follow him across the carpet to the desk.  

You greet Robin with an absent wave when she gives you a big, friendly smile. 

She either can’t or won’t speak for the tension between you and Steve, but she likes you just fine and as far as Dustin can tell, you have no issue with her.

Of course, this isn’t about your mysterious feud with Steve, this is about finding Eddie, so he does his best to ignore the way you’re staring daggers at each other.

“Where’ve you been?” Dustin demands once you reach the counter.

He can’t help but notice the way you’re gripping the edge of the linoleum so tightly your knuckles have turned white.

“I’ve been calling you all morning! Max said—”

You shake your head.

“It doesn’t matter,” You say, which Dustin finds to be particularly outrageous because of course it matters when Max is out here spreading rumors that she’d seen you getting arrested.

You’re talking again before he can voice any of those concerns.

“Where’s Eddie? What do we know?” 

Not much, unfortunately, and he hates to admit it.

Dustin’s cheeks puff out with a heavy breath as he turns his attention back to the long list of crossed-out names and phone numbers they have been meticulously calling for what feels like hours now.

All this time and all those people and still they are no closer to Eddie. 

“Only what Max saw.” He says simply.

Your eyes widen and your head snaps around to the redhead, pacing back and forth behind the counter as she talks on the phone. She casts a sidelong glance your way and scrunches her nose as if to say ‘quit staring at me’. 

It takes a very long moment before you finally turn back to Dustin. 

“What did she see?” You demand.

He doesn’t know why, but having your undivided attention like this makes his stomach tighten with anxiety – you’re just a little more intense than he is comfortable with right now, and strangely he’s nervous about telling you the truth.  

“Eddie and Chrissy together at his place.” He explains slowly, bracing himself for your reaction.

You clench your jaw and something indiscernible flashes across your eyes, but you prompt him to continue with a short nod.

Dustin takes a breath.

“Then a little while later the lights go wonky and she hears him screaming like he’s being killed, next thing she sees is Eddie hauling ass to get out of there.” 

He feels oddly proud, in the grand scheme of things, saying it all out loud helped to make it seem like they knew a lot more than he'd previously thought, but disappointingly you heave a dejected sigh and your shoulders fall. 

“So, she didn’t see anything,”

It leaves Dustin feeling strangely indignant. 

“She saw Chrissy.” He posits, deflating a little when the information fails to impress you. 

“Yeah,” you say bluntly, “So did I.”

Dustin doesn’t know what that means, but he can’t shake the feeling that there is some terrible reality behind that.

You’ve got this far-away look in your eyes, and you bodily shudder. He can’t imagine what must have happened to Chrissy to send Eddie running for the hills, big tough Eddie who everyone was so afraid of, who wasn’t really all that big or tough at all once you got to know him. 

A sharp pang of protectiveness lances through his midsection and Dustin finds himself eyeing you warily as he sees how your brows have come together, an angry scowl etched into your features.

He suddenly can’t stop thinking about the conversation you’d had with Eddie on the campus phone, how quickly it had turned before you’d inexplicably hung up on him – it leaves Dustin wondering just how you know Eddie, why you’d never mentioned him before, and suddenly he is very worried about your opinion regarding his guilt.

You want to find him, that’s for sure, for whatever reason that may be, but wanting to find him doesn’t expressly mean you want to help him, particularly if your opinion of Eddie is any shade of similar to your opinion of Steve.

Dustin hates to be suspicious of you, normally he would swear you don't have a mean bone in your body, but it's been a long time since you've been normal...    

“You know he didn’t do it.” Dustin says firmly, “...right?”

He watches you carefully as your head snaps up and you regard him with a strange look.

“Eddie.” He clarifies, “He’s innocent.”

Then your brows come together over your narrowing eyes, pulling a face that is somewhere within the realm of the same familiar look you always get when he says something you think is stupid or outrageous.

It’s oddly comforting, despite the way it makes his stomach clench with instant regret.  

“Of course, he didn’t do it,” you snap. “Dustin–”

He puts his hands up in surrender before you can admonish him for whatever it is that has offended you.

“Okay! I just wanted to make sure we’re all on the same page here–”

“Well, hold on,” Steve interjects, rocking up to lean beside you on the counter. You shift away from him, “We can’t just say Munson’s innocent and call it a day just because Princess Daphne here has got a major hard-on for him.” 

He jerks his head towards you and you recoil like he’d reached out and slapped you. 

“Excuse me?” You snap.

And Dustin can’t say he feels any different, he can’t believe what he is hearing.

“Steve, what the hell?” He yelps, trying his damnedest to be outraged and not to think of you dressed as Princess Daphne, which is easier said than done now that the image is in Dustin's head.

Even Robin is unimpressed, glaring at him from behind the counter. 

“What happened to innocent until proven guilty?” she huffs.

Steve, in turn, immediately goes on the defensive, throwing his arms wide and raising his voice like he can’t believe no one is agreeing with him. 

“Oh, come on, people, he fled the scene! That’s pretty much an admission of guilt right there”

You level him with a hateful look. 

“He didn’t do it.”

Steve stares at you a moment before shrugging and giving you a halfway apologetic look, almost like he hates to say it, but in a very condescending way. 

“Well, of course, you’d say that,” he says matter-of-factly. “You’re biased,”

Dustin watches warily as you bristle.  

“Biased.” You mimic, curling your hands into fists.

“Completely,” 

For half a moment, he thinks you might swing at Steve, and you wouldn’t be wrong for doing so, he’s being a complete and total douche.

To your credit, you take a deep, steadying breath before you come back with your rebuttal.  

“You don’t think maybe I’d say that because I have just a little bit more insight on the matter than you do?”

Steve scoffs, and just like that, all sense of diplomacy has gone out the window. 

“Oh, okay, insight? Is that what we’re calling it?” He prods, crossing his arms and staring down at you, “Insight?”

Once a mean girl, always a mean girl. 

“Fuck you.” you snap, and Dustin takes it as his sign to intervene.

He does his best to separate you, but unfortunately, he’s on the wrong side of the counter to do much more than reach out and grab the both of you by your sleeve. 

“Okay guys, take a breath.” he urges, rather helplessly considering how you and Steve have gotten into each other’s faces now.

He’s halfway to panicking because he doesn’t know what he’s going to do if you start to fight, like, really physically fight.

Dustin doesn’t think Steve would sink so low to hit a girl, he’s got principles even when he’s being an unhinged half-reformed mean girl, but he can also hear you berating him for being a sexist at the notion – “Girls can get in fights too, Dustin, don’t be such a –” 

“I think I’ve got a lead.” Max says suddenly, slamming her phone down into the cradle and mercifully cutting the tension enough to draw everyone’s attention. “Some guy called Reefer Rick? Apparently, he’s Eddie’s dealer and I guess he crashes at his place sometimes,”

For half a moment no one reacts, and then Robin snorts with laughter. 

It is almost loud enough to cover the harsh sound of indignation you make. 

“Reefer Rick? Is that his legal name? Like, do you think it says that on his driver’s license?”

Max just rolls her eyes. 

“Did you get a last name?” Steve asks then, leaning over the desk on his elbow.

“What, suddenly you care?” Dustin scoffs, “Two seconds ago you were ready to call the cops.” 

“Listen, I’m just trying to be realistic, you little creep — any way you’re biased too, you’re obsessed with the guy,”

The comment goes largely ignored, as Robin slides into the computer chair and immediately begins typing. 

“Maybe if we can find this Rick guy, he can point us in the right … direction…?”

Robin trails off when she notices how you’ve spun on your heel and started across the lobby.

“Where the hell is she going?” Steve asks, reaching across the counter to shove Dustin for his attention when he doesn’t answer right away. 

“How should I know?”

Steve narrows his eyes in a way that would have left Dustin half inclined to slug him were he the type of person with those types of inclinations.

He’s really in rare form today, and Dustin is almost certain at this rate someone is going to punch Steve by the end of the day. 

“She’s your babysitter.” He drawls.

Again, he says it like a dirty word, and Dustin bristles.

“What, so like I can read her mind or something?” He snaps, scrambling out from under the desk and nearly tripping over his feet in an attempt to go after you. 

You’re out the door in an instant, the chiming of that stupid bell signifying your escape.

Dustin staggers out after you, blinking against the sun and shouting your name. He has to say it three times before you slow enough for him to catch you.

“Where are you going?” Dustin gasps, winded from having to dash after you so quick.

You’re practically vibrating, eyes bright as you stare back at him.

“I know where he is!” You say.

“Who?" He demands, then feels his brain melt a little, "Reefer Rick?”

Your brows come together and you roll your eyes. 

“Oh please,” You scoff, turning to leave again.  

Dustin grabs you by the sleeve of your jacket and holds you there, stopping you from dashing off to the odd corner of the world. 

He doesn’t notice the strip of paper that falls from your pocket, too busy fixating on you. 

“Stop!” He pleads.

You pull against his grip and glare at him, the slightest twinge of annoyance coloring your face as you jerk your arm out of his grasp. 

“Dustin!” You start, swinging hard into your serious babysitter voice, “I have to go!” 

He knows this, despite how annoying it is, but he’s desperate to make you stay, anyway he can. 

“Just – wait a second, will you? You don't understand how goddam stressful this whole day has been, first with Eddie, then you–"

Your eyes go wide as you gesture to yourself incredulously.

"Me?"

It sets Dustin's teeth on edge.

"Yes, you! I've been trying to reach you all day. Max said you were in jail and when I couldn't get a hold of you..." He trails off as he realizes just how whiney he sounds and feels his cheeks burn for it.

All that talk about how he was too old for a babysitter and here he is wailing and moaning like a little kid.

You stand a moment, searching his face before your features grow soft in the strangest way. Dustin’s heart leaps up into his throat as you surge forward and embrace him.

"It's gonna be okay, Dusty, I know where he is now." You say against his ear.

Only at that moment, Dustin could not have guessed who you were talking about or what they'd all been doing only moments before if his life depended on it. Eddie? Eddie who? All he can think about is you and how good you smell.

It’s a quick hug, much to his chagrin, and it leaves him standing struck dumb enough that he doesn’t notice you skipping away until it’s too late. 

You’re halfway up the street by the time he comes back around. 

“Where are you going!” Dustin shouts, 

You twist around and offer him a big bright smile, one he hasn’t seen in what feels like years. 

“To find Eddie!” You call, like it’s the most obvious thing in the world,

The sound is lost to the afternoon traffic, and as quickly as you’d arrived, you’re gone again. 

Off to whatever corner of Hawkins Eddie is hiding in, he supposes. Dustin doesn’t know how he feels about it.

For some reason, his insides feel cold and squirmy, like they’re about to jump up into his throat. It feels like jealousy, but he can’t rationalize why he would be jealous.

You don’t know Eddie, except apparently you do, well enough to come running at the first sign of trouble. He can’t wrap his head around it.

He’s not worried you won’t find him, he’s only worried that after you do, he won’t be able to find you, like somehow you’re on the cusp of slipping through his fingers and he’s never going to see you again.

With a dejected sigh, he turns on his heel and starts back toward the video store, then he spies the long strip of paper lying on the pavement where you’d just been standing. 

Dustin stoops to retrieve it, guessing you must have dropped it in your rush to leave. He turns it over in his hands and his heart seizes. 

It’s a photo strip, one from the many kiosks they’d had at the Starcourt Mall before the Mindflayer took care of it.

The pictures are all more or less the same: it’s you and Eddie. 

Eddie giving you bunny ears and you sticking your tongue out, followed by Eddie pretending to bite your face while you laughed, followed by Eddie kissing you, and you kissing Eddie, and… and and and …oh God.

Dustin feels like he’s going to be sick.

So that’s how you know each other… that’s why you’d been down at the trailer park this morning, why you are so desperate to find Eddie. 

Finally, here is the missing piece of the puzzle, landing perfectly in place with an earth-shattering crash, threatening to knock Dustin off his feet. 

Your stupid boyfriend, the one who had plagued Dustin’s life for years, skulking around the periphery of his brain, slowly pulling you away from him, the one who had so callously broken your heart and left you sobbing pathetically on his couch last summer, who Dustin had sworn to avenge you against… is Eddie.

Of course it is, it makes perfect sense now that he really thinks about it, and Dustin hates every second of just how much it makes sense.

Who drove around in a shitty panel van blaring over loud rock music? Your stupid boyfriend — Eddie. Whose silver ring with the dark stone had you been wearing up until last summer? Your stupid boyfriend’s — also Eddie, as Dustin had noticed during his first session at Hellfire and done an incredible feat of mental gymnastics to convince himself that it wasn’t the same ring.

Who had he seen picking you up outside his house that night he’d torn down his curtains in a jealous rage? Who had he seen lean over the center console to kiss you? Your stupid boyfriend — Eddie Eddie Eddie. All signs point to Eddie, and Dustin’s mind is reeling for it. 

Now he knows why you’d never once mentioned Eddie or Hellfire in all your hours of doomsday prepping, and why Eddie had been so periodically weird and sulky and withdrawn. Dustin had long suspected it was a breakup that was ailing Eddie, especially considering Mike had acted the exact same way in the weeks following Will and Eleven’s departure for California. 

Behind him, the door to the video store chimes as it whips open, and Steve calls out to him. 

“Hey! Come in man, we’ve got a lead here!” 

Dustin crumples the photo strip without thinking and stuffs it into his pocket, hoping somehow he might forget he ever saw it, forget he knows what he now knows.

He whirls around and does his best to stuff down all the big unwieldy feelings threatening to burst out of him, making his way back toward Family Video. 

“Yeah, yeah, I’m coming. Keep your wig on.” Dustin mumbles, swallowing hard to keep his voice from trembling as he goes.

+++

Eddie doesn’t know what happened to Chrissy, but he knows somehow it is his fault.

At least that’s what everyone is going to say.

He was there, he had his hands on her, trying to snap her out of whatever terrifying fugue state had suddenly gripped her, sure, but fingerprints are fingerprints, and his are all over her.

She was there, and then suddenly she wasn’t; now she is dead.

It all happened so fast, and yet it won’t stop playing in his head in a constant loop, like a slow-motion instant replay scorched into the backs of his eyelids that he’s destined to relive every time he closes his eyes until the end of his days.

He’s never seen anything like that, never heard anything like it – he didn’t know a person’s body could bend like that, that bones could make that sound.

When he was thirteen, his father purposely slammed his arm shut in a car door in the weeks leading up to his final arrest. Why he did it didn’t matter – that was just the old man for you – what mattered was how Eddie had heard the bones in his forearm break and sat staring in the blissful ignorance of shock at the bend in his arm that didn’t belong before he ever felt any pain.

That was nothing like the noises that had rung out when Chrissy’s arms and legs snapped up out of place or the unnatural way she’d hung there, limbs bent out of shape.

He hopes Chrissy wasn’t present enough in those final moments to feel any pain. 

He can still see it when he closes his eyes like the image is forever burnt into the back of his eyelids. He doesn’t know if he’s ever going to stop hearing that sound.  

And now he’s hiding out in Rick Lipton’s boat house, which is probably the most incriminating place he could have chosen to hole up considering the circumstances, but it’s not like Eddie had a lot of options. 

It’s dark, dingy, and full of all kinds of nasty dust and debris that hurts his lungs to breathe, and all of that would be positively fine if it weren’t for the spiders. So many goddamn spiders in this shitty crumbling boat house.

Normally he would have bolted straight for the safety of the house at the first sight of them, but things are anything but normal right now, and Rick is supposed to be in jail.

In spite of being currently half out of his mind, Eddie knows well enough that it would do him no good to draw someone’s attention with signs of life in the house, so there he sits, miserable and terrified and itching with the sensation of phantom legs crawling up and down his body.

He would say that things could not possibly get any worse, but he’s worried he’ll jinx it. 

And then, like it was just waiting for its cue, a sudden commotion startles Eddie into leaping up to his feet.

A crashing bang of metal and glass out in the yard causes him to damn near leap out of his skin. Trash cans, he rationalizes, but what knocked them over?

Eddie balls his hands into fists and tries to convince himself it’s just raccoons, he's heard them skulking around outside the trailer for years, causing a ruckus, but he could have sworn he heard someone swearing under their breath.

Last time he checked raccoons don’t go around muttering “Goddamn— son of a bitch,” 

He crosses his arms tightly over his chest and hugs his biceps protectively. He holds his breath, listening hard for any kind of sound. 

It’s faint, but it’s there. 

The telltale crunch of gravel, moving from one end of the building to the other, footsteps, drawing closer with each passing second. 

Fuck. 

There’s someone outside. 

Oh fuck.

They’ve found him.

Fuck fuck fuck shit oh fuck.

Eddie’s head is on a swivel, looking for somewhere, anywhere to hide – there are dozens of places, plenty of dark corners and tarps he could tuck himself into, but the threat of spiders keeps him frozen to the spot.

Move or die, Man! his inner voice screams, now is not the time for irrational phobias, but his legs have turned to jelly frozen in concrete. If he moves they’ll shatter and he’ll fall. 

The footsteps are getting closer. 

Eddie’s mind races with every terrible possibility, his subconscious whispers hideous things to him and urges him to run, but he still can’t move.

He knows he needs to get as far away from here as he can as fast as humanly possible, but the tiniest, nagging thought has him paralyzed — where is he going to go? 

Who’s going to help him?

Wayne’s bound to be tied up in police tape by now, Rick’s in jail and so is his father, not that he would ever dream of going to the old man for help, his mother is dead, and his friends all think he’s an asshole, so who is there in the world left to help him?

Chrissy was the only one left around who was even halfway nice to him and he saw what happened to her. She’s the reason he’s in this mess.

Who would even believe him if he tried to explain it? 

He’s tired — so goddamn tired he can’t think straight, and he doesn’t want to run anymore.

He’s been running all night, hasn’t closed his eyes to so much as blink for fear of seeing Chrissy’s face again, and he’s dead on his feet… so incredibly fucking tired that he tries to tell himself he doesn’t care what happens to him now despite how untrue that is.

He ought to just give himself up. 

The footsteps are closer now, nearly to the door. 

So what if someone is out there? So what if he’s found? He knows he didn’t do anything, but how far is his word going to take him in this town?

How much is he willing to bet the court system will take one look at his name and decide his guilt without so much as a thought for things like motive and evidence? 

What’s the worst that can happen? Prison. Just like his father.

His heart sinks at the thought, despite how he tries not to care.

Of course, like always, the problem is that Eddie cares too much— how unfair it is that he’s spent his whole life doing everything he can to get off that train, be good (as good as he can, considering it all) stay out of trouble, and keep his head down, only to end up in this mess.

Worse than getting picked up for carjacking or possession or just because the cops in this town just plain don’t like him, if Eddie goes to prison for Chrissy’s murder, he knows he’ll never get out again. 

Not alive, in any case. 

If he runs he’s going to spend his whole life running, if he stays he’s going to die. What kind of options are those? He suddenly feels like an animal in a trap, presented with the prospect of chewing off his own leg to survive. 

Does he have the fortitude to do something like that? He doesn’t know. 

The footsteps have stopped, and Eddie realizes with a burst of hot stinging adrenaline that whoever is out there skulking around is right outside the doors and he doesn’t know what to do. 

You would have known what to do… wouldn’t you? Probably not, but it would have made him feel a whole lot better not to be doing this on his own. Not to have to do any of it on his own.

Instinctively, Eddie jumps forward and grips the door handle, the cool metal bites into the flesh of his palm and sends a shiver up his spine. He tells himself it’s to stop anyone from entering if they try the door, but apathy is clawing at him, urging him to twist the handle, open the door himself.

Better to get it over with, he thinks, and in a moment of despair he makes his decision. 

He doesn’t want to run anymore…  

He takes a deep breath in through the nose and out through the mouth, and another, and then one more for good measure as he tries to gather his courage.

He grits his teeth, and whips the door open. 

In an instant, all the air has left his lungs in the form of the loud, terrified shout that he is powerless to stop as it tears itself from somewhere in his chest cavity.  

You scream too, leaping damn near out of your skin and covering your ears like you always do when you get scared like that.

It’s you — holy shit, it’s you — clutching your chest like you’re attempting to recover from the mini heart attack he’d just given you.

The feeling is mutual. 

Eddie suddenly thinks he might pass out as he feels his heart seize erratically in his chest before dropping into his stomach. His vision goes spotty for the briefest of moments and his legs tremble under his weight. 

“Jesus—”

“—Christ!” You gasp, like you’re finishing his curse for him. “God, Eddie!”

You stomp your foot when you say it, like he’d jumped out and scared you on purpose, and the way you say his name makes Eddie’s heart thump painfully in his chest. 

“You scared the hell out of me.” You breathe, shaking your head and fisting your hands in the front of your shirt — his shirt, he realizes with a start.

It’s inside out, funny enough, but he doesn’t miss the faded Metallica logo, backwards and staring up at him from between your fingers.

It’s painfully endearing, and his heart is beating so fast it makes his chest hurt looking at it, at you, two of his favorite things, long since written off as lost, mourned and now miraculously found again. 

All this time and you still had it.  

He tries to breathe but it catches in his throat. 

Holy shit holy shit. 

Out of everything and anything he could have imagined he would find on the other side of that door – police, national guard, an army of angry hicks, the re-animated corpse of Chrissy come to feast on his flesh – Eddie never once never imagined someone would be coming to help him.  

He never imagined it would be you standing there. 

Somehow his mind is simultaneously going ninety miles an hour and moving at a snail’s pace. He can’t think, and yet he can’t stop the tide of thoughts and feelings and everything he suddenly needs to say to you fighting for real estate at the front of his brain. 

For half a moment, it’s all either of you can do but just stand there staring at each other. 

Finally, you gesture awkwardly into the room.

“Can I…?” 

It takes him a moment too long to realize you’re asking to come in, and Eddie all but leaps out of your way, staggering to the side to make room as you jump up over the threshold and shut the door behind you.

You make a wide circle around him, surveying the room, and he watches you carefully as you do, still not entirely convinced he hasn’t just been breathing toxic chemicals all day and is now hallucinating you. 

You cast a sidelong glance in his direction and he thinks he sees the corners of your mouth quirk humorously.

"Take a picture, Eds, it'll last longer." you hum.

"...Sorry." he mumbles.

He knows he’s staring at you, but he can’t stop.

He can’t believe what he’s seeing. After all those months he’d spent dreaming about you, imagining he was hearing your voice or seeing you turn a corner, always there but just out of sight?  He doesn’t trust it — he can’t.

You try again to make idle conversation.

“Rick’s boat house, huh?” You say, glancing at him over your shoulder in a way that is enough to make his knees tremble. 

His throat closes before he can even think to answer you, and it forces Eddie to settle on a meager response, nodding stupidly.

He doesn’t know what else to say about it and it’s driving him crazy. 

Eight months of memorizing all the things Eddie thought he would say to you if he ever saw you again and suddenly here you are and he can’t remember a goddamn word of it. 

He tries to speak, but words fail him. Still, he tries, opening and closing his mouth in an attempt to force the words out, gawping stupidly at you like a fish out of water.

He wants to ask what you’re doing here, how you found him, but he realizes in an instant that he doesn’t care how you found him, he only cares that you’re here.

Your eyebrows come together in stark concern and you finally take a step toward him.

He’s this close to panicking about it. 

This was not how he’d imagined reuniting with you would go. His palms have become sweaty and he resists the boyish urge to wipe them down the front of his jeans.

Eddie makes himself swallow hard to try and wet his throat where it has suddenly bloomed with cobwebs. 

He can’t keep staring at you like this. He’s got to say something — anything. He blurts the first thing that comes to mind. 

“That’s my shirt,” he chokes, for lack of anything better to say. 

His voice cracks and his mouth slams shut. He doesn’t know why he’s so nervous. 

You blink at him, like you have absolutely no idea how to respond.

“You left it in my room.” You say petulantly.

It’s almost enough to break the tension hanging heave between you … almost. 

He left a lot of things in your room, most of which you’d given back to him, but he won’t say that, for fear of sounding like he isn’t happy to see you, it’s just with the way you’re staring at him, he can’t make any kind of coherent thought come through the fog of his mind. 

“What are— h-how did you—?” 

You shake your head and heave and airy sigh, giving him this strangely pained look, smiling with your nose scrunched and your eyebrows turned up.

“...Heard you were in trouble.” You say, your words punctuated by a wet sniffle, and then you shrug and roll your eyes, like you always do when you’re halfway embarrassed by what you’re about to say, “Came running.”  

Jesus–

You might as well have stabbed him for how his lungs flatten in his chest. 

Eddie rocks back a step, without really meaning to, shaking his head in awe of the specter of you, miraculously standing there in the dingy light of a place you by all rights have no business being, staring at him in too close a shadow of the way you’d looked standing at the bottom of his front steps last summer.

Eddie finally makes himself breathe, sucking greedily on a sharp intake of breath before he realizes the distance he’s put between you, that he’s still putting between you, and something in him snaps. 

He needed you and you came running. 

“—Oh, my God.” 

Eddie surges forward and seizes you, crushing you against his body.

He curls his arms around you and hugs you so tight you’re bent nearly backward. You make a faint sound as his embrace forces the air out of your lungs, almost like a whimper and Eddie buries his face in your hair as he presses his cheek to the crown of your head.

The movement kicks up the familiar hint of your shampoo and conditioner, cutting through the murky, mildewy tang of the boathouse like a breath of fresh air.

He breathes deep — your perfume is different, something soft and faintly floral, but it is not enough to mask the subtle sweetness of your flesh.

Christ, he’d nearly forgotten your smell, and now he’s forgotten everything but you.

His mind is caught in a flurry of spinning thoughts and feelings that are quickly overwhelmed by a strange calm, seeming to radiate outward from your point of contact and bleeding down into his limbs to react with the adrenaline still surging there. It brings with it a sensation Eddie has only felt very few times in his life;

Walking home from the diner hand in hand with his mother while the setting sun guides them home, climbing the steps of Wayne’s trailer the last time it was ever just that and the first time it was home, laying in your bed at three o’clock in the morning with your head on his chest, watching your lashes flutter and listening to the slow pace of your breathing, a deep breath in followed by a slow breath out.

Little moments that live like glittering jewels tucked safely away in the spot behind his lungs lead him to one, gentle, all-encompassing feeling: he’s safe. 

Somewhere, very far back in his mind, Eddie knows he isn’t, that there are people looking for him who think he’s done something terrible.

There is still the faintest alarm trilling danger, danger, Will Robinson! in his deep psyche, but how can he make himself think about anything else with you in his arms? How is he supposed to care about anything besides the fact that, somehow, in spite of everything he’d said, everything he’d done to hurt you, you’ve come back to him?

Eddie breathes out a shaky sigh he hadn’t realized he’d been holding as he feels your arms snake up around his body — for a brief, terrible moment he’d worried you wouldn’t reciprocate, that he was really well and truly kidding himself that you were here for him, but those fears dissipate the moment he feels the press of your skin beneath his jacket and vest.

The warmth of you burns him even through the thin fabric of his shirt, and it is such a relief to be under your touch again. You hold him so tight that he thinks at any moment you could slip beneath his skin and live there, and he’d let you do it because now that he’s got you again, he’s never going to let you go.

Then suddenly you’re carding your fingers through his hair, stroking his face, looking up at him with your big pretty eyes, and speaking softly to him.

“Hey—” you’re saying, “It’s okay, Eddie... hey, look at me — you’re okay, I’ve got you.”

He sniffles and dips his head to wipe his cheek on the soft denim covering his shoulder because there’s no way in hell he’s letting you go for something as trivial as wiping his face.

He almost whimpers when you take your hand away from where it’s been resting on his side, and when you reach up to brush the pad of your thumb across his cheekbone, he realizes with a start that his face is wet, he’s trembling under your touch, body heaving – he’s crying.

He doesn’t even have the presence of mind to be embarrassed about it, he’s too busy looking you over, trying to commit your face to memory in case this is just a terrible hallucination and he’s never going to see you again.

He takes your face in his hands and reverently compares what he sees now to what had lived in his mind before, trying to decide what, if anything, is different.

Your hair maybe? Your clothes? He doesn’t know, he suddenly can’t remember anything before this moment.

"You’re here, you’re really here…" He hadn't meant to say it out loud, but running on nothing but adrenaline has his brain all but malfunctioning.

Your face scrunches up in the most heartbreaking look, much too similar to the way you’d been looking at him when you pounded on his door last summer as your hands come up to shadow his on either side of your face.

“Oh, Eds…”

It makes him feel sick — his skin is suddenly hot and prickly with it. 

He never wants to see that look on your face again. 

“What are you doing here?” He finally manages to choke out, “You — you shouldn’t be here,” 

Eddie regrets saying it as soon as it tumbles past his lips. Particularly with the way your face ever so briefly contorts with the shadow of the same look you’d given him when he’d told you he didn’t love you, when he'd lied to hurt you — even with you here he feels his heart break all over again just at the thought of it.

He’d meant you shouldn’t be here in the sense that it wasn’t safe for you as much as it didn’t make any sense, because hadn’t you moved away? Left Hawkins behind? Left him behind? 

You shift backward, like you mean to step away from him and Eddie feels himself grow panicky about it. 

“Do you want me to–” You start, but he doesn’t let you finish that terrible thought. 

“No!” He cries, surging forward to catch you, “No, please don’t go, just… just…” 

Eddie grips you tightly by your shoulders like he needs to hold you there so you won’t disappear, but it’s not enough.

His hands move, scrabbling higher and higher even still until they come up to grace the curves of your throat. He’s desperate for more of you, desperate to kiss you, but he doesn’t dare.

He can’t shake the sense that your being here is balancing on the edge of a knife, and any wrong move will send you running for the hills. 

In spite of that thinking, you lean into his touch and his heart thumps painfully in his chest. 

“How’d you know I’d be here?” Eddie asks. 

Your face softens as you take his hands in yours.

“I always know where to find you, Dummy.”

He doesn’t know why that’s the thing to set him off, but it does. 

Eddie chokes on the steadying breath he’d been trying to take as the dam breaks, wrenching it out of him in a hiccuping sob.

He tries to cover his face with his hands but you don’t let him hide, you take his wrists and pull them away to wrap around you instead, and you hold him. 

He doesn’t deserve this, doesn’t deserve this chance with you, doesn’t know how he got so lucky to even have it, but he’ll take every moment he can get while it lasts. 

Eddie clings to you, weeping pathetically into your hair and babbling incoherently, apologizing for anything— everything— an endless tide of all the things he’s wanted to say to you all year, since the moment he’d stood there and watched you leave that terrible night in August. 

He should have fought harder for you, he should never have let you go. 

Eddie tells himself he’s got to stop crying, to stop talking, to try and pull himself together, but it is just another thing he has no power over. 

His brain had all but switched off after what had happened to Chrissy, and his body has been operating on primal instinct in a desperate attempt just to try and get somewhere safe — he’s held it together up until this point, but he’s never been so scared in his goddamn life.

“God, I’m sorry,” he whimpers, “I’m so sorry, Baby, I don’t know why I said any of that stuff, I’m a fucking idiot, I didn’t mean it— I swear on my life I didn’t mean a goddamn word of it. I love you. I love you so fucking much it hurts, Jesus Christ, I’m just so fucking sorry—”

As much as he’s talking, you’re nodding, pushing his hair back, stroking his face, and all the other lovely little gestures you’d always done before when things were still fine, when you were still his. 

“I know,” you tell him, pressing your cheek against his temple and carding your fingers through the hair at the base of his neck. “I know, Baby. We’re gonna figure this out, okay? Me ‘n you, whatever it takes. We'll fix it.”

He can’t help the startled, watery laugh that bursts out of him to hear you say that.

It fills him with a bright and dangerous hope that maybe this is real, maybe you can pick up the pieces where you left them, maybe you still love him. 

“Yeah?” Eddie sniffs, brushing your hair back out of your face. “You promise?”

You catch his hand on your cheek and bring it down to draw an x over the left side of your chest, smiling sweetly and sincerely at him as you do.

"Hope to die."

Without the use of his higher functions, all Eddie knows how to do is love you, deeply, to his very core, and to hold you is not enough. 

He knows he has no right, but he cannot help himself.

Eddie presses forward and kisses you, a wet, forceful thing that you can barely move against as he frantically crushes his mouth against yours.

He kisses you with a desperation he’s never felt before, and he blesses you for how you lean into it, fisting your hands into the front of his shirt and doing your best to pull him that much closer to you.

It’s all scraping teeth, ragged breath, and reverent groping hands, only breaking apart in the briefest of intervals when the need to breathe and tell you how sorry he is outweighs the need to make up for all the time Eddie has spent not kissing you over the past eight months.

He tells you he loves you, again and again, breathing the words into your mouth, whispering them against your lips. 

He chases it hungrily, starved and greedy for your love, and wonders how he could have ever forgotten how much he needed it? How did he ever survive without it? Without you?

He would remind himself that he hadn’t been doing a very good job at it, but his mind is blown wide and bleached of all thoughts but you. 

Had he been able to really think, Eddie might have been afraid he would hurt you like he’d somehow hurt Chrissy, but the only thing he can muster is relief, because you’re here and that means something. Maybe there is at least the slightest chance you still love him. 

Thank you thank you thank you–

Even when you finally part, he does not release you, only holds you that much tighter. He presses his forehead to yours and he loves, loves, loves, bursting with the feeling like your touch has miraculously restored him after having been so wretched for so long. 

For the longest time, all either of you can do is lean against one another, swaying ever so slightly like you’re drunk on the euphoria of being together again.  

After a while, he lets you coax him into the house, and you collapse against one another on the sofa as exhaustion creeps into Eddie’s bones.

He can barely keep his eyes open, laying back with you spread over him, your face tucked into the crook of his neck where every now and then you’ll leave a gentle little kiss. He hums in response to each press of your lips, and he would thank you for each and everyone one, but his limbs are quickly turning to cement.

He’s so goddamn tired, but he fights against it, afraid that if he falls asleep he’ll wake up and find that he’s dreamt this whole thing. He's worried if he submits himself to Morpheus's embrace, you'll be gone when he wakes up, despite the way you’re tracing lazy patterns across his chest, how he can feel your steady heartbeat thumping in time with his own, the gentle rise and fall of your body with every breath in and out, in and out, in…

 A burst of soft, lilting laughter bubbles up from inside you, and Eddie startled awake, feeling himself light up for his favorite sound in the world, his favorite feeling as you smile against him. 

“What’s so funny?” He asks, thick and groggy.

He pushes up a little higher on the couch in the hopes it might stave off the need for sleep a little longer and pulls you with him.

You shift to accommodate this higher position, sitting on your knees and pressed into his side. 

You shake your head and laugh against the way your eyes are suddenly brimming. 

“I just can’t believe you’re here,” you sniffle, tilting back ever so slightly so you can look at him. “I was so scared I wouldn’t find you,” 

Eddie doesn’t know how to respond to that, so he pulls you into his lap and hugs you tight.

He’s still having trouble wrapping his head around the concept that you’d been out there looking for him in the first place, that you’re here now, after all the time he’d spent wishing for this, how he would have given his right arm just to hold you again.

He doesn’t know how you knew he needed you, what kind of unearthly force intervened to send you to him, but he’s so goddamn thankful you came running.

“But I did it,” you continue, sounding so endearingly proud of yourself, “I found you.” 

Your hands come up to stroke his face and brush at the dried tacky lines of salt left struck down his face. And then you say again, quieter this time like you’re in awe of it. 

“I found you…” Your eyes are bright and sparkling with admiration and tears and relief and a hundred different happy emotions that spill out of you and into Eddie.

He can’t help but laugh, a thick, watery sound dripping with relief and half muffled by your lips as he dips forward to kiss you. Once, twice, three times for the sentiment, precious little thank yous because he can finally breathe again. He’d spent the last eight months drowning and you finally pulled him up to break the surface. 

You saved him, just like you always do. 

“Yeah, Sweetheart, you did,” he sighs, letting his eyes slide shut as he holds you tight and breathes a deep, contented sigh, “You found me.” 

Taglist: @harrys-tittie @r-a-d-i-0-n-0-w-h-e-r-e @itsrainingbisexualfrogs @thicksexxualtensionaltension @ganseysgff @scoopsr0binn @peanutbutter-y-jams @audhd-dragonautagonaut @clilxlxx @alexandriaemily200 @averagestudent03 @but-vanessa @cosmictime45 @timelordfreya @forever-war @munsonzzgf @chervbs

@irisabrams

[sleepy-otx]

Babysitter/Bodyguard AU

MCs: ZhongXiao & Qiqi

Zhongli who is at war with many other regions, including the one where Xiao is enslaved in, and who also has a child who is Qiqi. Xiao who runs into her in his master's land and realizes that oh shit, she's from Morax's land and she cannot be here!! Qiqi, of course, is like not worried because in her eyes her dad is very powerful and will always keep her safe, not realizing that she's not in her dad's land meaning he doesn't have any special powers there and she is in a lot of danger should anyone find out who she is. Xiao doesn't know who is her dad and doesn't give her the chance to explain and tries to get her to leave. Qiqi is still trying to collect plants for medicine and refuses to leave because there is a lot of plants there and she still thinks that she's home. She climbs up a mountain and Xiao is immediately noping out, but rushes back to save her when she's about to fall. After all, it's not like his master ordered him to not save the child and it's not like he's disobeying and she doesn't have to know he's technically helping the enemy

He saves her and gathers all the plants she wanted and gave her a quick blessing to protect her and help her travel faster into her land undetected and unharmed. It works really well to the point where it's still active by the time she arrives home and sees her family freaking out that she was missing for so long. She doesn't understand what the big deal was and just said that she made a nice new friend, but she never actually got his name. Skip forward where Qiqi constantly goes over to try and find her new friend and Xiao is like no, no, no, leave right now, but can't bring himself to be mean about it.

A party with all neighboring kingdoms/nations invited is held including his lady who is quite antagonistic about it. They will go but really it's more so an excuse for her to observe Morax's palace and look for any weak points. Of course, she nor any of her people could attack without starting a war, but it was better to have information just in case. While they're in a foreign kingdom/nation they would have to listen to that ruler's orders as a sign of respect but they needn't try to hard, just enough to get others off their case. Xiao immediately spots Qiqi from across the room and realized who she is. She's the reason why the party was thrown in the first place. The birthday party of the little lady of liyue. A party that went south when someone tried to take advantage of the situation. It's quickly resolved, but Morax notices how is daughter clinged onto one of his foes when she was scared. Xiao's master also notices it and considers this new information carefully.

The child seeks him out on other special occasions. He rebuffs each attempt. Acknowledging her and the little friendship they created would be equivalent to handing his master the spear to strike directly at Morax's heart and ending his reign. She was just a child after all. Easy to manipulate and easy to please. So he says harsh words with cold eyes. He says them even as his heart begins to hurt and says them even as she looks at him with tears in her eyes and says them when her family looks at him with such hatred for hurting her.

Later on, when his master goes against Morax, he cant bring himself to watch Qiqi get killed and takes a fatal blow meant for her. It's a stupid move, so stupid that everyone stops fighting for a second to process it. He passes out from the pain still holding her in his arms. When he is interrogated he lies. He lies because there's no point in trying to get out of this live. He just wants it all to end already. Eventually, Morax wins the battle against Xiao's master and Xiao is set to be executed, but Qiqi asks to talk to him privately first. She tries to interrogate him because she doesn't understnd why he's so nice one second then so mean the next. He can't hide the truth from her and explains as best he can so as to not leave her wondering after his death. Though he does not notice her father listening in on their conversation.

A few weeks later and it is decided that his punishment is to guard the little lady and the king after much persuading from her and a lot of thinking from her father. From there other stuff happens and Xiao is really confused as to why the fuck he's still alive and why they want him of all people to protect some of the most important people in their nation. Cue shenanigans and Qiqi using her big brain to get them together so she can have her perfect happy family.

[yostresswritinggirl]

in a midst of a commission, the child and a npc got caught in a surprise attack by abyss mages, and they're now missing! Oh no ... they're now cornered by the Fatui!

Kid: Uh... You... you have... no abs!

Fatui agent: ...what's with this lost sassy child? are you a fool? this is no playground.

Kid: Hey! I'll have you know I scored 100 on math five times in a row—

* proceeded to be taken to the palace for interrogation due to relationship with traveler *

Childe: Oh goodness! What are you doing here? I'll bring you back home.

Kid: Why do you, out of all of your colleagues, seem the most sane? Should I be concerned for my safety?!

Childe: Well... I can't say you're wrong.

Harbingers:

Kid: *visible sweat* i am very uncomfortable.

—🗿

Oh gosh haha you know at one point, the Harbingers will find some reason to be fond of the child too-

ACTUALLY it would be even funnier if they do have intel of child reader from the beginning and everytime they show up in the order that they do in the actual game

And they always end up seeing the child, not harming them tho, actually they don't mind showing how curious or fond they are of the child. Signora deliberately not harming them when they met in Mond, even giving them a pat on the head as she struts out with the gnosis.

Childe projecting his siblings to the child, giving them an allowance of a million mora and doing whatever they ask. Even if the child ends up hating Childe due to the game, he's still barfing up money and toys for them. Oh, they wanna beat him up? He'll gladly stand still and test his own limits!

Then there's Scara swinging his hands while walking together during the meteor event when he's still pretending to be good.

Dottore taunting them and trying to get info out of their knowledge while letting them punch his long legs without any real harm. At some point he'll make Babysitter Dottore equipped with the knowledge to take care of them, minus the derangedness.

I can't do the other Harbingers since I got no clue how they are, nor did they make any appearances in game yet

[dammitadolfnomorecake]

Rage Fire Institution

Confessional. 2.

A month passed by slowly. Maki unable to interrogate that damn bastard of a babysitter and unable to rid himself of that damn feeling. That damn TC08 had piloted as if it weren’t a training model. The synapse rebound was minimal. The split second delays between thought and action nearly extinct. Never had he piloted a mech that felt that damn smooth and it was all that damn Professors fault.

Not once had that bastard showed up in that month. Day by day Maki’s irritation had grown. Himself blind over his own actions and cold glare that reinforced his status as school delinquent. His friends not helping as they carried on about the TC08 as if it were some godly creation and not a simple bloody mech. Trying to take his mood out in the physical combat classes hadn’t helped. And thanks to his ever churning mind, his sleep schedule went to hell.

The whole month was hell and it was all because of that bastard Professor. He just knew there was something up with the man. Why else would he condemn him to the hell he had if he wasn’t messing with him? The bastard plagued his mind, leaving him gritting his teeth. Even his nightly excursions had been cut, all out of anger over being piloting that mech.

Twice a month students were allowed a Sunday in the city. School uniforms had to be worn, as were personal trackers which clipped to one’s ear and could only be deactivated by the dorm father. Knowing his awful mood, his friends had taken him out for fun. His best friend, an annoying alpha his age named Kang Li, had sworn black and blue it’d be the perfect chance to get his mind off the things bothering him. Little did either of them expect to run into the very reason Li why suffered at the hands of his angry best friend.

Out of all the cafes close to the institute, Li had assured Maki this one was a hit with the ladies. The cute atmosphere seemed to draw them in, and given Li’s other attempts to change his mood had failed, Maki had gone with flow, intending to ditch his best friend and find a way to really let off some steam.

That was until his damn babysitter came steamrolling back into his life. The alpha had barely taken in the overly sweet atmosphere when his grey eyes landed on the Professor. If anger had a taste, Maki would be choking on the flavour. Sitting across from a shorter male, the pair of them instantly pissed him off. How dare they be there enjoying himself when he was running laps in his mind over how to give the man a piece of his mind. Beside him, Li leaned back, letting out a low whistle as his gaze landed on what had caught Maki’s attention

“Would you look at that. He knows how to leave the institute. Do you think he’s on a date? He has to be on a date”

Li had no social awareness. As Maki’s eyes traced the Professors from, he noted the way the man’s hands were clenched together beneath the table. He noted the way his babysitter sat a little too straight and the way the smile on his thin lips didn’t meet his eyes. If it was a date, the Professor clearly didn’t know what to do. Hissing, Maki elbowed his best friend

“Stop staring, he’ll notice”

“We’re not at school. He can’t punish you for being here on our off time”

“Idiot”

Li flashed him a hurt look, Maki wondering how they’d managed to become friends

“That’s rich coming from you. I was merely stating…”

“You’re merely stating is giving me a headache. You promised this would help my mood”

“And? It’s not my fault you’re not having fun. You made those children at the game centre go crying to the manager. I hadn’t even finished my game because you went and stuck your nose in. Now you’re all bent out of shape over him”

“I’m not bent out of shape. Why should I care what Professor over there gets up to? He’s the arsehole who cause this mess to begin with”

Still, Maki was unsettled. It’d been a whole month. A whole month without lectures and now Professor was sitting there without a clue over what he’d put the alpha through. Ordering, the food was tasteless and no girls dared approach their table due to his fierce aura. Li tried his hardest to get through to him, showing him videos on his personal comm device as if it’d provide entertainment. He needed a cigarette. A dirty habit picked up by the planet from Earth II that was still somewhat popular since they’d moved away from the cancer causing carcinogens. Pushing his chair back suddenly caused Li to jump, Maki biting down teasing the alpha for being so skittish

“I need a cigarette”

On the other side of the cafe, and unknown to the alpha, the Professor had finished his own dealings. Maki making the mistake of automatically glancing in that direction and accidentally making eye contact with his babysitter. His first instinct was to sit. To sit back down and wait until the close was clear. That was until he reminded himself he’d done nothing wrong. He was allowed in the same cafe, heck, the same suburb, and no reason to change his life decisions because of one man.

Ignoring the Professor, Maki stalked out ahead. Though he shouldn’t have been smoking in public, no one was going to say anything. As long as he stashed the thin cigarette pen before reentering the school, there’d be no questions asked. Casually, he leaned back against the smooth black exterior of the cafe, half turned from the entrance into a poor attempt to hide his presence.

Not that it worked in any form.

A few moments later, the professor left the cafe with his date. Am autonomous vehicle smoothly pulling up to the curb as if timed to the last millisecond. Ever the bootlicker, his babysitter stood beside the open door to the ride, allowing his companion to enter before him. Having never seen his arch nemesis acting this way, Maki couldn’t help his curiosity. From his reckoning the man who’d entered the car was also an alpha. The Professor had found himself an alpha. Tch. Clicking his tongue at the scene, Maki quickly looked away, keeping the Professor in the corner of his eye as the vehicle door closed and the man stepped back.

Now should have been his time. The bastard in front of him had been plaguing his thoughts. As irrational as it was, he had to know what had happened to the TC08. He’d never get a moment rest without it. Twisting the end of his cigarette with his lips, Maki stashed it in his pocket, before turning his body towards his babysitter. In return, the man across from him simply looked him up and down before turning away.

The man was adamant to make a fool of him. Whether it be at the institution or in the streets, Maki was sick of it. No one simply went around doing good deeds

“Oi. Professor…”

The Professor’s body tensed for half a moment, clearly hearing him, yet choosing to keep walking. Angrily, the alpha jogged after him, catching his babysitter by the sleeve with ease thanks to his long legs

“I’m talking to you”

Tugging his sleeve free, his babysitter huffed through his nose. It was hardly Maki’s fault if the man was in a bad mood and he had no right taking it out on him. Looking as if he wanted to bolt for a second, the Professor seemed to mentally give up, finally turning to face him as he asked

“So I’ve gathered. Did you miss me that much?”

The nerve. For a moment the alpha nearly gaped. As if he’d miss being scolded and ridiculed constantly by a man only 6 years his senior. Not that was the point. No. He had far more pressing matters on his mind as he blurted out

“What did you to that TC08?”

For a moment the Professor’s eyes went wide, the arsehole covering him mouth as let out a breathy squeak of a laugh. For some reason the air around them seemed to relax, and for some reason that only made Maki madder

“I’m asking you a question. I’ve never piloted anything as smooth at that. No other mech moves that way. What did you do?”

“You really think I did something? What am I, in the maintenance department now?”

Ah.

Right. The maintenance department. Red coloured the young alpha’s cheeks. He’d been so busy being angry at the Professor that he… Ah… Reaching up, Maki found his hair ruffled by the Professor before he could figure out what happened. The man’s tone still carried a trace of laugher

“Don’t tell me you chased me down just to ask me a question about the TC08. No wonder I’ve been reading reports about your bad mood”

Reports on his mood? Who was reporting on his mood? Why?

“What the hell? Do you teacher types have nothing else to do? You’ve been gone for a month!”

“You don’t check the school forum often do you? You’ve been the trending hot topic”

“What the fuck…?”

There were too many questions to unpack. Why was he on the school forum? Why was the Professor on the school forum? Why was the Professor on the school forum checking up on him? Dropping his hand, his babysitter sighed

“You really have no self awareness, do you? Use your optical headset tonight and take a look for yourself. If that’s all…”

Maki’s brain couldn’t catch up. He was too busy being angry with himself for blaming the Professor and not the maintenance department. Covering his face with his left hand, the alpha lowered his head. He needed someway to save face, owing his babysitter didn’t sit right

“Wait… Just… Why did you tell me about the mech? Why me?”

The Professor shrugged

“Because you have your reasons. And call mine me acting on my own impulses”

“You actually know what impulses are?”

“I do. Look, Skylark’s a grade one arsehole, so if you think about it, you got one up on him by piloting the one mech that had halfway decent responses. Not that I should be encouraging you. You’d be eaten alive if you transferred to the front lines now. I’ve got somewhere I need to be. Go back to your friend and try to stop overthink it. I’ll see you at school tomorrow”

Without a way to claim back his pride, all Maki could do was watch the Professor turn and walk away, the arsehole casually waving it him over his shoulder as he went. In the last month he felt like he’d learned more about his permanent babysitter than he had since he’d gotten stuck with him, and seeing he’d learned a whole lot of nothing, he felt he shouldn’t feel as ruffled by it all as he did. Clicking his tongue, Maki turned on his heels, driving his hands into his pockets as he started back towards the cafe.

***

Li wouldn’t shut up. In his absence his fellow alpha had met some girl that he’d instantly fallen head over heels for. Ignorant to all the thoughts swirling through Maki’s mind, his best friend trailed him back to his dorm, throwing himself on the alpha’s bed as Maki threw himself into finding his headset.

“Bro, what are you even doing? Are you still listening to me?”

Resisting the urge to roll his eyes, Maki slammed his desk drawer closed before pulling open the one under it as he replied sarcastically

“How can I do anything else, you’re in love. Big shocker there”

Li sounded offended as a pillow flew over Maki’s shoulder

“Her name is Li Yon, like, what are the odds? Li and Li? She was so lovely. Get it, like Love-Li”

“I get it. Fuck, have you seen my headset?”

“That thing I’ve been trying to get you to use since our first year? It’s in the bottom of your wardrobe, you threw it there when you couldn’t find your charger. What’s got you so amped up?”

As if he could possibly tell his best friend that his babysitter was the root of all his issues

“Nothing. Tell me more about this blind girl you’ve snagged”

Dreaminess took over Li’s voice

“She’s beautiful. She’s an alpha. She goes to that fancy prep down the road. Next free day we’re going to go shopping. She said she’ll help me colour my hair”

Li had it bad. For being a tremendous flirt, his best friend was far more familiar with rejection that acceptance. Abandoning his desk, Maki started on his wardrobe

“So she’s trying to change you already”

“As if. I told her I wanted to change up my style. You’d know all of this if you hadn’t gone chasing your babysitter. She knows him, you know. She said she recognised him. Apparently he’s been in the news or something. Anyway, she’s practically perfect… and I’m going to make a second account so she can get on our school forum too. It’ll be so much easier to talk about what’s happening if she knows what’s going on”

Maki nodded along. So driven to find his headset, he once again found his brain lagging. Pausing as he picked up a shirt he didn’t remember owning, he frowned as he looked to Li, who’d taken over his bed completely

“Hang on, what did you say?”

“I said I’m going to make an account…”

“No, not that bit. What do you mean the Professor’s famous?”

Li shrugged it off

“She said she recognised him. She wasn’t sure how she knew him, only that she did. I can see why. I mean, he does sort of stand out”

For an alpha who’d landed himself a blind woman, Maki was baffled

“What do you mean “He stands out”?”

“You must have noticed how the girls look at him… He’s got a slim figure and a nice face”

Blinking at Li, Li cocked his head in response, asking

“What? That’s what they all say”

“I suggest you go to the infirmary and have your head looked at. The Professor is as ordinary as they get”

With a heavy sigh, his best friend sat up

“That’s because you’re always in trouble. There’s a lot of people aiming for the Prof. For a starters, he keeps you under control. Then there’s that air of mystery around him. Is he really a research subject here? If so, what’s the secret project? You should know, you spend the most time with him”

Once again Maki questioned why he was friends with the man. Returning to his rummaging, the alpha shook his head

“All he ever does is complain and tell I’m better than this. He wouldn’t even know how to pilot a mech”

“Because we all know how well you do. He can’t be all bad, he did give you the heads up”

“And cursed me while he was at it. Don’t you have your own dorm to go back to?”

“And miss this? No, I’m here to support my best friend in his moment of need”

Translation. Li was there for the inevitable moment Maki lost his temper at his headset

“Then you could at least try to be helpful”

“Excuse you. I’m plenty helpful. Yon said she had the perfect girl in mind for you. I know you have no luck with the women. What was the last one called… Amelia? And that was months ago”

Li kept a better track of his dating life than he did. Maki didn’t like to think himself a player, nor did he like to think himself clueless, but he’d thought he’d made a forced friend, not agreed to dating the poor woman. Still, he sighed heavily

“It was Ashar. And I didn’t even know we were meant to be dating”

“She cooked you lunch”

“She heated up some instant noodles… then dumped them in my lap because you told her “she was alright, but needed bigger boobs””

Li clicked his fingers. Maki didn’t need to look back to know his friend would have taken on a “superior all knowing” look

“That’s right. Then isn’t it all the more important I look after your love life now? She’s promised this girl is cute and one of those quiet types. We’re too young not to take a chance”

“And you’re too loud. Fuck, I can’t find it. Give me yours”

“Nope. Not happening. I promised Yon…”

“Alright, already! Enough. Fuck. You go back to your dorm”

Shoving everything back into his wardrobe, Maki slammed the door closed before it could all fall out again. Sensing he was on the move, Li finally got off his bed

“Nope. I’m sticking with you. Where are we going?”

“Student services. If I can’t find my headset I need a new one”

Shit. This was all the Professor’s fault. If he hadn’t gone spouting on about the school forum, then Maki wouldn’t have had to bother with replacing the headset… He’d have to bill the bastard. Further adding to his questioning of why he was friends with Li, his best friend served to drive him further crazy

“Forget that, I’ve got a spare one. It’s outdated… third or fourth gen…”

Striding over, Maki hit Li upside the back of the head

“Why couldn’t you say that before? It doesn’t matter how old it is, as long as it does the job”

Li shot him a scathing glare as he rubbed his now aching head

“It’s not my fault. You didn’t give me a chance. You’re getting set up, whether you like it or not. You need to let out some steam”

“Yeah. Right. Can we go get that headset now?”

In a fluid motion, Li crossed his arms, asking teasingly as he did

“What’s in it for me?”

Despite Maki’s mood, Li might withdraw his offer should he continue showing his agitation, so the alpha picked his words carefully

“I won’t hit you again tonight”

“Make it a whole month and it’s a deal”

Despite Li making it sound as if he hit him at every chance he got, Maki nodded

“Fine. Deal. Now can we get a move on? The sooner I get this over, the better”

“Done, let’s go. We don’t have time to stand around waiting all day”

With his teeth ground together and a headache coming on, Maki wasn’t sure he wouldn’t completely lose it at the Professor the next time he saw him.

[arg-machine]

Books read recently: crime & horror

You know, it’s quite pointless to write a new introduction to this latest Books read recently post, when the one for the recently-published Comics at machine HQ post will – with just a few minor alterations here and there – work perfectly.

So, thanks to the digital miracle of Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V [and arg’s not the only one who has used it: many so-called “creative types” from a certain entertainment industry have been using this copy-paste philosophy for decades…], here’s the reworked introduction:

“It’s been a while since arg published a list of books that he has enjoyed recently, and though he’s been busy lately – with the Apocalypse Project, his music and the recently-revived Marvin 1.0 project, for instance – he never stopped reading. And this week, arg is listing some of these books – horror and crime fiction to be specific – in this new post.”

The books… As is the case with these list-based posts from machine HQ, all featured titles – most of which were published this year – are arranged in alphabetical order below. Additional titles from same or similar genres are included in the Also recommended sections.

Ready? The Dark Side awaits…

“When Ruby was a child growing up in Miami, she saw a boy from her school struggling against the ocean waves while his parents were preoccupied. Instead of helping him, Ruby dove under the water and held his ankle down until he drowned. She waited to feel guilty for it, but she never did.

And, as Ruby will argue in her senior thesis while studying psychology at Yale, guilt is sort of like eating ice cream while on a diet – if you’re already feeling bad, why not eat the whole carton? And so, the bodies start to stack up.

Twenty-five years later, Ruby’s in an interrogation room under suspicion of murder, being shown four photographs. Each is a person she once knew, now deceased. The line-up includes her husband Jason. She is responsible for three of the four deaths… but it might be the crime that she didn’t commit that will finally ensnare her.”

Also recommended: A Heart Full of Headstones by Ian Rankin, Iron Annie by Luke Cassidy and The Wheel of Doll by Jonathan Ames.

“Out on the Yorkshire Moors lives a secret line of people for whom books are food, and who retain all of a book’s content after eating it. To them, spy novels are a peppery snack; romance novels are sweet and delicious. Eating a map can help them remember destinations, and children, when they misbehave, are forced to eat dry, musty pages from dictionaries.

Devon is part of The Family, an old and reclusive clan of book eaters. Her brothers grow up feasting on stories of valor and adventure, and Devon – like all other book eater women – is raised on a carefully curated diet of fairy tales and cautionary stories.

But real life doesn’t always come with happy endings, as Devon learns when her son is born with a rare and darker kind of hunger – not for books, but for human minds.”

Also recommended: Always the First to Die by R.J. Jacobs.

“Mallory Quinn is fresh out of rehab when she takes a job as a babysitter for Ted and Caroline Maxwell. She is to look after their five-year-old son, Teddy.

Mallory immediately loves it. She has her own living space, goes out for nightly runs, and has the stability she craves. And she sincerely bonds with Teddy, a sweet, shy boy who is never without his sketchbook and pencil. His drawings are the usual fare: trees, rabbits, balloons. But one day, he draws something different: a man in a forest, dragging a woman’s lifeless body.

Then, Teddy’s artwork becomes increasingly sinister, and his stick figures quickly evolve into lifelike sketches well beyond the ability of any five-year-old. Mallory begins to wonder if these are glimpses of a long-unsolved murder, perhaps relayed by a supernatural force.

Knowing just how crazy it all sounds, Mallory nevertheless sets out to decipher the images and save Teddy before it’s too late.”

Also recommended: Just Like Mother by Anne Heltzel.

When arg got back into reading comics in the 1990s, he did so because of the inventive and challenging tales a new generation of comic book writers were putting out. At the forefront of this wildly-creative bunch was… yes, Alan Moore! arg would’ve been perfectly happy if Moore had retired after creating John Constantine [who happens to be one of arg’s favourite fictional characters] but thankfully, he didn’t.

Since then, Moore has gone on to create several genre/mind-bending titles and inject new life into old, stagnating characters. And now he’s here with his first ever collection of short stories… which arg will be reading as soon as he’s through with the book he’s reading now.

And this, good reader, means that you have the chance of beating him to it…

Also recommended: Fairy Tale by Stephen King.

“‘I found out my sister was back in New York from Instagram. I found out she’d died from the New York Daily News.’

When the body of disgraced reality TV star Desiree Pierce is found on a playground in the Bronx the morning after her 25th birthday party, the police and the media are quick to declare her death an overdose. It’s a tragedy, certainly, but not a crime.

But Desiree’s half-sister Lena Scott knows that can’t be the case. A graduate student at Columbia, Lena has spent the past decade forging her own path far from the spotlight, but some facts about Desiree just couldn’t have changed since their childhood. And Desiree would never travel above 125th Street. So why is no one listening to her?

Despite the bitter truth that the two haven’t spoken in two years, torn apart by Desiree’s partying and by their father, Mel, a wealthy and influential hip-hop mogul, Lena becomes determined to find justice for her sister, even if it means untangling her family’s darkest secrets – or ending up dead herself.”

Also recommended: The Red Canoe by Wayne Johnson, The Book of Cold Cases by Simone St. James and Secret Identity by Alex Segura.

…and this is the book arg’s reading right now. He’s only a few chapters in, and as far as he can tell, this is going to be a funky folk-horror-in-an-isolated-community-as-experienced-by-an-outsider sort of a ride…

“On the idyllic island of Lute, every seventh summer, seven people die...

Lute and its inhabitants are blessed, year after year, with good weather, good health, and good fortune. They live a happy, superior life, untouched by the war that rages all around them. So it’s only fair that every seven years, on the day of the tithe, the island’s gift is honored.

Nina Treadway is new to The Day. A Florida girl by birth, she became a Lady through her marriage to Lord Treadway, whose family has long protected the island. Nina’s heard about The Day, of course. Heard about the horrific tragedies, the lives lost, but she doesn’t believe in it. It's all superstitious nonsense. Stories told to keep newcomers at bay and youngsters in line.

Then The Day begins. And it's a day of nightmares, of grief, of reckoning. But it is also a day of community. Of survival and strength. Of love, at its most pure and untamed. When The Day ends, Nina – and Lute – will never be the same.

Also recommended: The Devil Takes You Home by Gabino Iglesias.

“1988, and puberty has hit Art Barbara hard – he's a painfully socially awkward teenager, underweight, acne-ridden, and bent crooked by scoliosis. Worse, he has no extra credits to get him into college. So Art starts the Pallbearers’ Club, dedicated to mourning the homeless and lonely – the people with no one else to bury them. It might be a small club, unpopular and morbid, but it introduces Art to Mercy Brown, who is into bands, local history, folklore and digging up the dead.

Decades later, Art is writing his memoir to try and make sense of it all, because nothing about Mercy is simple. It’s all a matter of trust, right? Their friendship twists and coils around the pair of them, captured in Polaroid snapshots and sweaty gigs and the freaky, inexplicable flashes of nightmare that lurk in a folded jacket at night.

Because Art is writing his memoir to make sense of it all, but Mercy is reading it too. Mercy thinks Art’s novel – because this isn’t a memoir – needs some work, and she’s more than happy to set the record straight. What if Art didn’t get everything right? Come on, Art, you can’t tell just one side of the story…”

Also recommended: Vicious Creatures by Ashton Noone.

“On this season of The Catch, contestants must compete for love. And their lives. When the final four women in competition for an aloof, somewhat sleazy bachelor's heart arrive on a mysterious island in the Pacific Northwest, they prepare themselves for another week of extreme sleep deprivation, invasive interviews, and, of course, the salacious drama eager viewers nationwide tune in to devour.

Each woman came on The Catch for her own reasons – brand sponsorships, followers, and, yes, even love – and they've all got their eyes steadfastly trained on their respective prizes. Enter Patricia, a temperamental and woefully misunderstood local living alone in the dark, verdant woods, and desperate for connection.

Through twists as unexpected as they are wildly entertaining, the self-absorbed cast and jaded crew each make her acquaintance atop the island's tallest and most desolate peak, finding themselves at the center of an action-packed thriller that is far from scripted – and only a few will make the final cut…

Also recommended: It Rides a Pale Horse by Andy Marino.

“Liv has a lot of secrets. Late one night, in the aftermath of a party in the apartment she shares with two friends in Ålesund, she sees a python on a TV nature show and becomes obsessed with the idea of buying a snake as a pet. Soon Nero, a baby Burmese python, becomes the apartment’s fourth roommate. As Liv bonds with Nero, she is struck by a desire that surprises her with its intensity. Finally she is safe.

Thirteen years later, in the nearby town of Kristiansund, Mariam Lind goes on a shopping trip with her eleven-year-old daughter, Iben. Following an argument Mariam storms off, expecting her young daughter to make her own way home … but she never does. Detective Roe Olsvik, new to the Kristiansund police department, is assigned to the case of Iben’s disappearance. As he interrogates Mariam, he instantly suspects her – but there is much more to this case and these characters than their outer appearances would suggest.

A biting and constantly shifting tale of family secrets, rebirth and the legacy of trauma, Reptile Memoirs is a brilliant exploration of the cold-bloodedness of humanity.”

Also recommended: Shifty's Boys by Chris Offutt, The Houseboat by Dane Bahr and Clown in a Cornfield 2 by Adam Cesare.

“Surrounded by barren trees in a snow-covered wilderness with a dim, dusky sky forever overhead, Siberia’s Kolyma Highway is 1200 miles of gravel packed permafrost within driving distance of the Arctic Circle. A narrow path where drivers face such challenging conditions as icy surfaces, limited visibility, and an average temperature of sixty degrees below zero, fatal car accidents are common.

But motorists are not the only victims of the highway. Known as the Road of Bones, it is a massive graveyard for the former Soviet Union’s gulag prisoners. Hundreds of thousands of people worked to death and left where their bodies fell, consumed by the frozen elements and plowed beneath the permafrost road.

Fascinated by the history, documentary film producer Felix “Teig” Teigland is in Russia to drive the highway, envisioning a new series capturing life and death on the Road of Bones with a ride to the town of Akhust, “the coldest place on Earth”, collecting ghost stories and local legends along the way. Only, when Teig and his team reach their destination, they find an abandoned town, save one catatonic nine-year-old girl – and a pack of predatory wolves, faster and smarter than any wild animals should be.

Pursued by the otherworldly beasts, Teig’s companions confront even more uncanny and inexplicable phenomena along the Road of Bones, as if the ghosts of Stalin’s victims were haunting them. It is a harrowing journey that will push Teig beyond endurance and force him to confront the sins of his past…”

Also recommended: Devil House by John Darnielle and The Hacienda by Isabel Canas.

Well, that’s it for this new Books read recently post. Visit The Apocalypse Project [on twitter and on tumblr], and stay tuned to machine HQ blog…

[gffa]

It’s been three months since my last set of recs and, in that time, this fandom has been on fire pretty much 24/7! Do I mean being on fire in the sense of a tire fire? Do I mean being on fire in the sense that everyone has been rocking it? Yes. And the fic that the fandom produces makes all of the rollercoaster worth it because, holy crap, I can never be dead on the inside when fic makes me feel this many things! I HAVE FELT SO MANY THINGS WHILE READING THESE FICS and I’m not going to be alone in that. So have some fic that I really loved! I’m less appreciative, however, of how you guys are putting out more fic than I can keep up with, so this list is once again a mere fraction of the good stuff out there. But at least you’ll be crying from feelings alongside me and hopefully find something that really tickles you to read! We could all really use some distraction and something good in this world, so STAR WARS fandom is here to do its best to provide. STAR WARS FIC RECS: PREQUELS RECS: ✦ Best (Questionable) Practice by Papook, jocasta nu & jaster mereel, 1.2k    Maybe this one will talk, Jo thought, watching the man walk down the path approaching her hiding place. Every other person she had interrogated thus far had been singularly unhelpful, with no response worth recording. She was beginning to despair of finding any sources for her research, but she was determined to follow every possible lead. ✦ Bloodlines by KCKenobi, obi-wan & anakin & dooku, 35.8k    or: your classic family road trip across a desert planet, except your grandpa is, you know, a Sith Lord. And now he’s sort of starting to bond with your Jedi dad. And that might be an issue. ✦ walk by faith/tell no one what you’ve seen by Killbothtwins, obi-wan & qui-gon & bant & bruck & tahl & dooku & cast, time travel, 39.1k    After the end of the war with the Empire, Obi-Wan wakes up in his twelve-year old body. Now all he needs to do is convince everyone he’s psychic, trick his Master into taking him on before he’s sent to Bandomeer, redeem a few bad guys, and try not to have a nervous breakdown. Pretty easy. It’s not like the Sith are lurking on the horizon, waiting to devour the Jedi Order. ✦ Recovery by Peach_Bitters (peachybitters), obi-wan & anakin, 1.4k    Obi-Wan falls ill during a mission and Anakin convinces his master to let him fill in for him. ✦ Beach Day by AdaliaK, obi-wan & anakin, 2.9k    Obi-Wan tries to have a relaxing day at the beach with Anakin. It goes about as well as most things in Obi-Wan’s life. ✦ Just Resting My Eyes by hellowkatey, obi-wan & anakin & ahsoka & rex, 1.2k    During a war, sleep is few and far between sometimes. Especially for stubborn Jedi who think meditation is a substitute for a REM cycle. ✦ cause a commotion (jump in the ocean) by loosingletters, obi-wan & anakin & ahsoka, mer!anakin, 1.2k    Ahsoka worries about finding a Master and instead finds a friend haunting the ponds in the Room of a Thousand Fountains. ✦ it takes a village by svitzian, obi-wan & anakin & plo & bant & kit & quinlan & aayla & luminara, 11.6k    While Obi-Wan has business to attend to, Anakin is under the supervision of a string of Jedi babysitters. ✦ When the Master’s Away… by AdaliaK, obi-wan & anakin, 3.1k    When Obi-Wan goes out, leaving Anakin alone, the mischievous Padawan decides to flaunt all his master’s rules. As always with Anakin, disaster ensues. ✦ How Soon Is Now by victoria_p (musesfool), obi-wan & anakin & ahsoka & luke & leia, 1.2k    Time moves differently on Malachor. ✦ Villains and Knaves by Be_Right_Back, obi-wan & hondo & katooni, 4.1k    Hondo has a run-in with Obi-Wan, which is always good for morale, and bad for profit. ✦ a void in the deserted temple by nadiavandyne, barriss & ahsoka & luminara, time travel, ~1k    When Barriss first sees Ahsoka again, she throws up. (Or, Post-Order 66 time travel, Barriss Offee edition.) ✦ Special Collections by Papook, obi-wan & cody & jocasta & clone ocs, 3.5k    The Negotiator gets an unexpected comm from an unusual place. Enter LIIL Squad, stage right. ✦ undeserving fall (this kind of sunlit love) by loosingletters, luke/palpatine & cast, time travel, 9.6k    A Naboo proverb says that it takes seven steps to fall from grace or climb towards glory. Sheev had never understood why the fall wasn’t considered a victory, when he had fallen towards the dark side with laurels adorning his head. ✦ Carbonite Tears by SiennahRobek, anakin & ahsoka & cast, 2.7k    In a new attempt to turn Anakin Skywalker to the dark side, Chancellor Palpatine orchestrates the disappearances of heavily pregnant Padme Amidala and Master Councilor Obi-Wan Kenobi. It backfired. Nobody really won. ✦ Secrets of the Temple by AdaliaK, ahsoka & cast, 3.6k    Youngling Ahsoka goes on a misguided adventure through the lower levels of the Jedi Temple and makes some interesting discoveries along the way. ✦ well-lived by CeruleanTactician, yoda & dooku & anakin, 1.2k    With the death of Count Dooku, the Republic is on the verge of victory. Not long after, Yoda takes the time to say goodbye to his last padawan. ✦ black gloaming by loosingletters, shmi & ahsoka & ocs & cast, 1.8k    “Shmi Skywalker, meet Sahki Tano and her daughter Ahsoka.” A few weeks after her son left Tatooine, Old Jira asks Shmi if she could take in two newly-captured slaves. ✦ With the Tide by KCKenobi, obi-wan & anakin & ahsoka, 3.6k    the disaster lineage ends up on the beach in the rain. Anakin says some things he regrets. Obi-Wan has a secret. And Ahsoka’s just tired of being caught in the middle. ✦ unbalanced, triumphant, and trying again by katierosefun, obi-wan & anakin, 2.6k    sometimes you just want to go home, wherever that may be. ✦ peace (finally) by billowypants, obi-wan & padme (& anakin), 1.5k    In the aftermath of her husband’s Fall, Padmé Amidala searches for peace. ✦ A Mountain Retreat by Peach_Bitters (peachybitters), obi-wan & anakin & bail antilles & ocs, eventual discipline, 4.2k wip    Obi-Wan and his young Padawan, Anakin, go to stay with friends in the mountains of Alderaan. Anakin learns to love snow, and finds new ways to get himself into trouble. Mistakes are made and lessons are learned, and a lot of fun is had along the way. ✦ a journey to hope by CloudySkyWars, obi-wan & ahsoka & cody & cast, 6.5k    It’s a big galaxy out there. Ahsoka searches for Obi-Wan after Order 66, and gets some help on the way. ✦ A Series of Chaotic Reports by Binouchetruc, obi-wan & anakin & ahsoka & yoda & dooku & qui-gon & cast, 5.5k wip    This is a story where we share the suffering and delight of the Jedi Council through various reports of various Padawans through the years. ✦ Anakin’s Birthday by Peach_Bitters (peachybitters), obi-wan & anakin, 1.3k    Anakin is about to celebrate his first birthday as a Jedi Padawan and Obi-Wan helps to make it special. Pure fluff. ✦ Not Much Has Changed, Except for Everything by hellowkatey, obi-wan & anakin, time travel, 4.4k    Anakin is angry at Obi-Wan, and the Force decides to intervene by throwing him back in time. OBI-WAN/ANAKIN RECS: ✦ For Breakfast by Crowgirl, obi-wan/anakin, 2.6k    The house by the lake is small, primitive compared with their Academy lodgings, but it’s also quiet, blissfully quiet and far away from anything that might turn into a battle or an ambush or a skirmish or even a brawl. ✦ Let me be that I am by Himboskywalker, obi-wan/anakin & cast, eventual NSFW, omegaverse, male pregnancy, 5.2k wip    A year after the war is won and Sidious defeated, the galaxy limps on and recovers, though many find healing a difficult thing. Anakin most of all, until the impossible becomes possible, and he discovers something more terrifying than war, the unknown of what he thought he could never have. ✦ Satellite Mind by intermundia, septemberist, obi-wan/anakin, NSFW, 19.3k    Five times Obi-Wan heard Anakin’s thoughts, and one time Anakin heard Obi-Wan’s. ✦ Significant Bother by obiwanobi, obi-wan/anakin & qui-gon, 4.8k wip    Qui-Gon Jinn lives to train Anakin, and it somehow turns Anakin and Obi-Wan into lifelong enemies. It’s a shame they work so well together anyway. ✦ there is no heart for me like yours by RexIsMyCopilot, obi-wan/anakin, NSFW, 4.3k    Anakin wasn’t even aware what he was doing, but everything Anakin did was turning Obi-Wan on like a switch. When they are finally alone, Obi-Wan makes sure he knows the effect he has on Obi-Wan. ✦ respect to speak, and trust by treescape, obi-wan/anakin, NSFW, ~1k    Or, after one too many acts of insolence in public, Obi-Wan sets a punishment. ✦ nothing compares to you by RagnarLothcat, obi-wan/anakin & ahsoka & rex & palpatine & mace & padme & yoda & cast, time loop, 30.2k wip    Sometimes you only get one chance to make things right. But when you’re Anakin Skywalker, Chosen One, sometimes the Force intervenes to give you a second chance. Or a third. Or a fourth. ✦ pretty bird and the blanket thief by tennessoui, obi-wan/anakin & ahsoka & cody & rex, NSFW, modern au, d/s, read the tags, 14.5k    A stupid, petty fight between stupid, petty people leads to Anakin banning sex for however long it takes to get Obi-Wan to see reason. Definitely telling Obi-Wan he can’t touch his own pretty bird is going to first of all, work, and second of all, end well for everyone involved. Sure. Totally. ✦ Run Away With Me by intermundia, obi-wan/anakin, NSFW, omegaverse, 8k    Several months after their mating, Obi-Wan and Anakin have left the Jedi and the war to travel the galaxy. Busy nesting for his upcoming heat, Anakin has been complaining of a sense of danger in the Force, and his nightmares have been getting worse. Is it just pre-heat anxiety as Obi-Wan suspects, or something more sinister? ✦ to love is to burn, to be on fire by RexIsMyCopilot, obi-wan/anakin, NSFW, 5.8k    Anakin and Obi-Wan attend the coronation of a queen on Naboo. Or: fancy clothes go on, fancy clothes come off. ✦ cute guy, fast car, i’m all yours by wanderlove, obi-wan/anakin, NSFW, modern au, 7.3k    In which Anakin saves a rich lawyer from a low-level Hutt enforcer and gets himself railed as a reward. ✦ à la carte by RagnarLothcat, obi-wan/anakin & ahsoka & mace & satine & quinlan & cast, NSFW, modern au, 13k    Anakin Skywalker is a perfectly normal grad student. He spends his days at the robotics lab, his evenings working at an upscale restaurant and his weekends on inadvisable hookups. That is, until Obi-Wan Kenobi saunters into his workplace and sweeps him off his feet. ✦ immortal and divine by Himboskywalker, obi-wan/anakin & cast, NSFW, sith!obi-wan, sith!anakin, 4.3k    In which Obi-Wan and Anakin fall to the dark and swear their allegiances to Sidious and Dooku.Obi-Wan hates the boy he blames his master’s death for,and he hates and hates and hates.But for the strangest reason that boy grows into a man,and never wavers in his allegiance to a Sith he might have called master. ✦ disobedience is a demand for change by RexIsMyCopilot, obi-wan/anakin, NSFW, dom/sub, daddy kink, 4.5k    Anakin acts like a brat for feeling guilty about something. Obi-Wan gives Anakin what he’s looking for. ✦ Lux Æterna by obiwanobi, obi-wan/anakin, author chose not to use warnings, 4k    There is no braid in his hair, —there has never been a braid in his hair,— masters bow too low in front of him and padawans’ whispers are always louder when he’s close by. ✦ we’ll make it to the other side by beetlesacquired, obi-wan/anakin, nsfw, omegaverse, read the tags, 1.5k    All he could think about was Anakin, the fear Anakin must’ve felt even as he masked it with anger, the worry that he’d been abandoned as a casualty of war, that Obi-Wan wasn’t coming for him. ✦ Prompted | Ventrobikin by intermundia, obi-wan/ventress & obi-wan/anakin & obi-wan/anakin/ventress, NSFW, 9.5k wip    A collection of short smutty oneshots written in response to prompts :) ✦ deception: epilogue by RexIsMyCopilot, obi-wan/anakin, NSFW, 6.2k    Anakin and Obi-Wan renew the physical part of their relationship after Rako Hardeen ✦ holy hands by Demi_Fae, obi-wan/anakin, NSFW, omegaverse, 1.1k    Obi-Wan Kenobi and Anakin Skywalker love each other and always will, through a hundred lifetimes and a thousand years. ✦ Vows and Promises by lowstandards, obi-wan/anakin & padme & satine & quinlan/asajj & palpatine & cast, NSFW, modern au, 11.2k    Or: the resulting AU of watching Four Weddings and a Funeral for the millionth time but there’s only one wedding and no funeral in this ✦ Fine Pearls & Bad Leather by SingManyFaces, obi-wan/anakin, NSFW, bodyguard au, 1.6k    Lord Kenobi spends the night in with the captain of his personal guard while abroad in the Lake Country. ✦ O Trespass Sweetly Urged by Artemis_Unbound, obi-wan/anakin, NSFW, 8.6k    Anakin and Obi-Wan witness a sex ritual while on a mission. Obi-Wan doesn’t understand why Anakin is so scandalized by this, until Anakin admits that he’s never had sex. Obi-Wan…might need a minute to process that. ✦ touch of heaven with a wild side by Demi_Fae, obi-wan/anakin, NSFW, sex pollen, 1.3k    “That was one of the things we were able to figure out while you were…” Anakin gestured to Obi-Wan who nodded for him to continue. “You would have to ask Kix about the specifics, but it’s some sort of combination reproductive and defense feature, and at this point it’s basically orgasm or…” ✦ marks for excellence by treescape, obi-wan/anakin, NSFW, modern au, professor!obi-wan, 2.1k    Or, Anakin helps his husband, Professor Kenobi, with his grading. ✦ Snap, Crackle, Pop by intermundia, obi-wan/anakin, NSFW, spanking, 5.2k    Several months into the Clones Wars, Anakin disobeys Obi-Wan’s orders during the Battle of Muunilinst and puts himself in grave danger. Returning to his Master, he finds him at his wits end. Obi-Wan asks if Anakin can think of any consequences that would actually work in teaching him a lesson, and is surprised by the answer. ✦ color me by Demi_Fae, obi-wan/anakin, NSFW, 2.5k    Obi-Wan had never seen such a bright color, on himself or on anyone else. ✦ blue, for you by y0u_idjits, obi-wan/anakin, NSFW, 2.6k    “What do you think?” he asks, a touch breathless. “Would it suit me?” Obi-Wan is utterly frozen. He swallows loudly and starts, “Anakin-” ✦ Prompted - Chapter 14: #BinGate by intermundia, obi-wan/anakin, NSFW, mild d/s, modern au, 3.9k    Bake Off AU, judge/former contestant, light scolding kink. ✦ perks of promotion by treescape, obi-wan/anakin, NSFW, modern au, professor!obi-wan, 2k    Obi-Wan and Anakin celebrate Obi-Wan’s promotion. ✦ me and my man, we get on like a house on fire by tennessoui, obi-wan/anakin & ahsoka & cast, NSFW, modern au, 14.8k    Obi-Wan had just wanted to relax in a nice bath, get away from the pressures of international stardom. Just for a night. A few hours. Too bad he accidentally starts a kitchen fire instead. REBELS RECS: ✦ Living memory. by outpastthemoat, kanan/hera & depa & ezra, 1.1k wip    Kanan has been on the run for the majority of his life. And danger has become merely another tool he wields, as much as his blaster or saber. At night, Kanan examines his memories. ORIGINAL TRILOGY RECS: ✦ time and time and time again by gigglesandfreckles, obi-wan & anakin & leia & luke & cast, 9.6k    “I know who you are,” she interrupts, staring at his hand suspiciously. “You’re Ben. Luke’s teacher.” He smiles at that. “I have had many titles, but…’Luke’s teacher’ is one I confess to being quite proud of.” ✦ Glimpses by SpyroTF, anakin & han, 1k    When Vader steps aboard the Millennium Falcon for the first time, he doesn’t react the way Han expects him to. ✦ Paternal Relations by willowcrowned, obi-wan & anakin & luke, 1.2k    Oh shit, Luke thinks, Vader is my dad’s ex-husband. ✦ Mouse Droids and How To Fix Them – A Quick And Easy Guide [Livestream] by loosingletters, luke & leia, 2.3k    As the future Queen of Alderaan, Leia is under a lot of pressure and stress. So what if she stays up late to watch a farmboy mechanic fix a droid? FULL DETAILS + RECS HERE!

[clubyukhei]

[1:15PM]

“yangyang? do you like that girl?” 

babysitter!yangyang nearly chokes on his americano at how that question came out of nowhere. 

the toddler in the baby carrier strapped to his torso, wei, bursts into giggles as he looks up at his uncle coughing hysterically. across the table sits a five-year-old girl, yun — wei’s older sister and yangyang’s beloved niece — who’s also giggling while watching her uncle struggle.

“what girl, yun?” yangyang asks, letting out a sigh. he knows damn well who she’s talking about.

“the girl who brought the food to our table!” yun smiles, taking a bite from the madeleine between her fingers. “you like her?”

“no, i don’t.” 

she stares at him for a few seconds as she chews, observing her uncle closely. then a huge, cheeky grin begins to spread across her tiny face. 

“why didn’t you look at her just now? when she was talking to you.” she questions. 

“i did!” 

“nope. you didn’t.” yun shakes her head. she reaches for an eclair from the plate of pastries on the table. 

yangyang lets out a huff of surprise to mask the now bubbling pit of anxiety in his stomach. why is he sitting here allowing himself to be interrogated by his five-year-old niece? 

his eyes wander to a distance away and fall onto you. you’re behind the counter once again, smiling brightly at a customer who also has a toddler in their arms. the same smile yangyang saw up close and barely survived. 

he also barely survived hearing your voice and laughter. and the sight of you cooing at wei. and the way your hair frames your face and how you manage to look so pretty even in your work uniform. and the fact that you gave him a free cookie to go with his americano.

“papa says that sometimes, when a person likes you, they can’t look at you because they’re too nervous.”

“your papa just says things.” yangyang deadpans, making a mental note to nag at kunhang once he gets back home. that’ll definitely be a conversation from friend to friend — not brother-in-law to brother-in-law. “i don’t like her.”

cut the crap, whines a tiny voice in yangyang’s head. he doesn’t just like you a little, he likes you a lot. heck, he is head over heels in love with you — someone he met literally not even an hour ago. and if you spare him just another second of your attention, he would probably earn the title of the world’s happiest man alive right away.

if it was any other day, he’d attempt to strike up a conversation or tell you one of the three stupid jokes he has memorised by heart. but the circumstances of today are simply pathetic. yangyang cringes just thinking of how lame he must look, sitting in a kids’ cafe wiping baby drool off his jeans and making the silliest faces to keep wei entertained. 

“hmm. but i think… she likes you too.”

“sure.” yangyang mutters. 

yun gasps. “let me go ask her!” she puts the half-eaten eclair back on the plate and slides off her seat. 

“no!” yangyang hisses in panic, the star-shaped cereal puff he was about to feed to wei falling onto the ground. “get back now!”

but it’s too late — the little girl is already running to the counter and getting a hold of your attention. glued to his seat, yangyang watches the entire scene in horror. there’s no saying what yun will blabber to you now. maybe it’s better if he doesn’t know.

then he catches you laughing at something yun has said.

it’s over, yangyang thinks. two girls laughing at him — one of them the girl of his dreams and the other a literal child. it can’t get worse than that... but it does. as if yun had just heard his thoughts, she turns around and points her finger in his direction proudly.

yangyang could seriously cry. why is this happening to him? 

he looks down at wei, muffling a groan into the knitted beanie sitting on top of the toddler’s head. oh, to be a toddler munching on cereal puffs, peacefully unaware of what’s going on. 

when yangyang steals another glance, he finds you already staring at him. LOOK AWAY NOW, he screams internally. but he can’t. 

it feels as if the world has stopped moving just so he can fully appreciate this moment and everything about it — how your eyes sparkle under the rays of afternoon sunlight, how the most beautiful smile he has ever seen stretches across your lips… yangyang doesn’t even realise he has frozen altogether until wei starts squirming around, tugging the strings of his hoodie with his tiny fists. 

in a matter of seconds, he circles his hands around wei’s hips and starts bouncing his knee. when he looks up this time, he spots you grinning as you grab a marker and a small piece of paper. you shake your head to yourself, that silly grin never leaving your face as you pen something down and hand it to a very excited yun who’s tip-toeing against the counter.

“yangyang!” yun exclaims after finishing her marathon from the counter back to their table. she’s waving the folded piece of paper in the air like it’s a golden ticket to willy wonka’s chocolate factory. “look! i told her you like her!”

yangyang snatches it out of her hand, his heart pounding as he shakily unfolds it and comes face to face with a series of letters and numbers written in red marker ink. no fucking way.

for the cutie. (the baby. or... you ^^ )

XX-XXXX-XXXX 

“i think she really likes you! papa and mummy got married after she gave him her phone number.”

“oh my god.”

-

[sunshineseung]

Journal Part 3 // Jeongin

🍄 | genre: smut ☁️ | pairing: Yang Jeongin x female!reader 🌿 | wc: 4.3k 🌸 | includes: milf!reader x babysitter!college student!jeongin, “mommy”, shower/morning sex, handjob (m!receiving), cum swallowing, smut within smut [mentions of punishment, spanking, pegging, free use, “mistress”, flogging, chastity], masturbation, brief phone sex, bratty jeongin, punishment, spanking with hand, grinding, overstimulation (m!receiving), PIV (riding, cowgirl/reverse cowgirl), unprotected sex, creampie, aftercare… phew good luck

🌊 | One | Two | Three | Four | Five | Six | Finale |

The morning sun blinds Jeongin through the curtains, and he lazily rubs his eyes to see steam coming from under the bathroom door. You’ve already gotten up to get a shower, but you so rudely forgot to invite the sweet college boy blissfully sleeping next to you. Jeongin springs out of bed with a little too much energy and sneaks into your bathroom, being as quiet as possible.

“Jeongin, I know you’re there.” You fold your arms as you face the clear shower door Jeongin’s silhouette was on. He freezes, shrugs, and opens the shower door just enough so you could see only half of his body. 

“May I come in?” 

You sigh and swing open the door fully, making sure no water can get out. “Sure, baby.” 

Jeongin gets giddy and hops in, smiling brightly as you continue to lather soap on your body. Suddenly, he hugs you from behind, pulling you as close to his body as possible. You feel his semi-erection on your back, but that’s not your focus right now. You just want to be clean for your day off. 

“Thank you for letting me stay over.” Jeongin nuzzles his head in the back of your neck, cuddling you under the running water. “I really enjoyed last night. Did you?” 

“Yes, sweetheart. I enjoyed it a lot.” Your reassurance makes him blush, and he’s happy you can’t see the flustered expression on his face. He doesn’t know what to do next. Luckily, you have plans. “Hey, Jeongin, do you write… fantasies about us in class?”

“Oh, uh, sometimes. I make sure no one sees, though.” He backs away, leaning on the far shower wall. “I mostly write in my composition class.” 

“Who’s the professor?” You turn around, facing him fully, pinning him to the wall with your eyes. 

“Mr. Lee?”

“Lee what?” 

“Lee… Minho?”

Damnit. Of course. Of course it was going to be your ex husband. Admittedly, this wasn’t the best time to interrogate Jeongin, but it’s still early, and the kids aren’t up yet, so you have time to turn this around.

“Mommy, can you put shampoo in my hair?” Jeongin’s cute little voice almost makes your heart burst, and it’s practically impossible for you to say no now. Jeongin turns around and kneels, patiently waiting for you to wash his hair. You squeeze some shampoo into your hand and spread it through Jeongin’s wet hair, making sure it suds on his scalp. He hums in content, loving the feeling of your hands through his hair. “Thank you.”

“No problem, baby.” You kiss the back of his neck, making a shiver run down his spine. You hear the light sounds of Jeongin touching himself, slowly and quietly enough that he hopes you don’t notice, but you obviously do considering you see his right shoulder moving.

Once the shampoo is finally rinsed out of his hair, you pull him onto you, his back falling against your chest and stomach. You run your hands over his abs before taking a hold of his cock, wrapping your fingers around it gently before slowly jerking him back and forth. Jeongin weakly bucks his hips into your hand, dazed and clouded with neediness. 

“You like when mommy touches you like this, huh?” The water sprinkles down onto Jeongin’s cock, creating a weak lubricant for your hand. He doesn’t answer you; he can only whimper, too far gone to even form a thought. He slipped into this headspace so fast, and it kind of shocks you. Jeongin rustles in your arms, seeming to wish to break free from your hold. “What’s wrong, baby?”

“W-want to see you.” Jeongin squeaks out, prompting you to turn around and pin him against the wall so the water hits your back. You get on your knees, looking up at him as his face is bright red and his eyes are half-lidded. “You’re so pretty, mommy.” 

“Aw, is my little boy trying to compliment me so he can cum?” You go back to stroking his cock, licking the tip once to remind him of how your mouth feels. His sensitive cock begins to twitch, begging to release. Another lick, this time from his balls to his tip, and he’s cumming on your face, shooting his load across your features, mostly in your mouth. 

You wipe the cum from your face to your mouth, swallowing every last bit of his tasty release. Jeongin only watches, eyes glued to your mouth, but he doesn’t know if he can kiss you considering you just ate his cum. 

“Mommy, can I kiss you?” You look up and him and groan as you stand up, your knees feeling the repercussions of kneeling on the hard shower floor. He raises his chin as you grasp his face, pulling his soft lips to yours, kissing you sweetly. You press your body against his, your tits coming in contact with his chest, and he has to fight every thought to snap his neck down to look at your chest. Still, your lips were made for each other, perfectly in sync with every ministration. He’d be a fool to break this kiss right now. 

Nothing in Jeongin’s wildest dreams could have prepared him for being with you, even if it isn’t anything serious. He loved just being in your presence, focused on your every word and every action, mentally taking notes so his memories of his time with you could be as vivid as possible. 

On the other hand, nothing in your wildest dreams could prepare you for your ex-husband rudely coming back into your life only to shame you for possibly having a relationship with another consenting adult. When he called you last night, you had no idea Jeongin was one of your students, but somehow, Minho saw what he was writing in his little notebook, and it all seemed too descriptive to be fake. Jeongin was younger when he saw Minho the most, and there was no way Jeongin could recognize him as his ex-neighbor now. It was all an innocent mistake that cost you a lot of sleep last night. 

You weren’t thinking about that now. All you could think about was what time it was, because your daughters would be awake any minute and you always make them breakfast on your days off. You break the kiss and get out of the shower with Jeongin, graciously helping each other dry off, and you go out to begin making waffles for your kids.

“I didn’t know you could cook!” Jeongin sits at the dining table, full of glee just like a child would be. “Can I stay for breakfast?” 

“Jeongin, you can stay as long as you’d like.” You press the waffle iron closed, beginning to cook the first of three. “But no funny business. I don’t want the girls to know what’s going on between us.” 

“Oh, that’s okay! I just know there’s no fresh breakfast at my house.” He laughs a little, lounging back in the wooden chair. “I’ll leave after I eat so you have a day with your kids, and I also have homework to do.” 

“They give you kids homework on the weekends?” You sound almost offended by the thought of doing any type of schoolwork on your days off. “From what I can remember, we never got homework on the weekends, or if we did, I certainly didn’t do it!” 

You both laugh, then go back to a comfortable silence. It felt right. Having another adult in the house, someone to talk to who isn’t only talking to you because of work. This is what you’ve been missing. 

When your daughters wake up, they’re shocked to see Jeongin sitting at the table, but they’re also happy to see him. They drag him out of his seat at the table so he can play with them before you tell them to behave. 

“Jeongin is a guest this morning. Treat him nice!” 

Jeongin’s embarrassed to admit that he almost said yes mommy, but the glorious taste of the syrup-covered waffles takes his mind off that. You just lean against the counter and watch them eat, sipping your coffee as the sun continues to rise.

🍓🍰🐤🍀💐🍯

“Jeongin, where were you last night?” Felix says through his headset, waiting for his game to load. “We need a team of four!”

“I thought Hyunjin would have been on.” Jeongin yawns, tired after having you wake him so early. “I was busy, sorry.” 

“Busy doesn’t mean writing in your diary, Yang.” Jisung chimes in, calling Jeongin by his family name as if it’s an insult. 

“First of all, it’s not a diary, and second of all, I was busy with a… girl.” Jeongin hesitates to give away too much information, but he folds the seconds he’s brought back to where he was last night: under you. 

“Aw, our baby Innie has a girlfriend?” The group fills with oohs and ahhs as Jeongin groans and rolls his eyes, adjusting his headset out of frustration. “Let us meet her! C'mon man!” 

“You can’t meet her. We aren’t dating.” Jeongin threatens to leave before they drop the topic, but he can’t stop thinking about you, being already semi-hard by the end of their first match. The team berates him for his poor playing, but they can’t even fathom the thoughts going through Jeongin’s head that he can’t wait to put into his journal. 

I want mommy to punish me. Punish me for these thoughts, punish me for touching myself without her, punish me for anything she pleases. Her perverted little boy wants to be ruined, and yet she’s so gentle with me. I don’t care if the sound of her spanking me wakes up her kids. It’ll be worth it just to feel her treat me like I’m her servant who lives to please, because I am. I’m nothing but a vessel she should be free to use at her will. I’m her toy. All hers. 

Jeongin’s phone pings from the other side of his desk. It’s a text message from his favorite neighbor, and what perfect timing too. In your little text conversation, you and Jeongin discuss the babysitting times for the week, and don’t even manage to mention anything about sex. As upsetting as this is, while he waits for your answers, he’s diligently jotting down all of his twisted fantasies. 

“You take my strap so well, honey.” She thrusts into my ass again, this time going even deeper than before. I hold my legs up with my hands around my tights, spreading my ass for her to fuck. My cock is leaking with precum while she strokes it with one hand and plays with my nipples with her other. “Dumb little boy’s being so good for me now.” 

When you finally say goodbye over text, Jeongin shoots back a short “can we call?” As strange as you thought this text was, you press his number, soon to be greeted with the heavy breaths of the young boy. Luckily, the girls were asleep and you were alone in your bedroom, so you could say anything. 

“Aw, is my boy all needy while he’s alone?” You tease him across the line, although you could just yell this out your window to his. Jeongin slips his pants down his thighs to release his cock, playfully touching his tip before gripping his shaft and stroking himself slowly. “Are you thinking about mommy?”

“Y-yes, I’m thinking about you, mommy.” How he got so excited so quickly is beyond his own understanding, but just from hearing your lustful voice, Jeongin’s already brainless, hardly able to utter a simple sentence. 

“Good boy. You’re always such a good boy, huh?”

“Only for you, mommy.”

“Then why does my good boy want to be punished?” Jeongin’s breath hitches, suddenly remembering the short, revealing conversation with you about wanting to be used. “I wouldn’t want to punish you without a reason, my little prince.”

“Wh-what can I do?” He heaves out, quickening his pace on his dick. “Give me rules, mommy. I want to break them.”

“Oh, pretty boy wants rules now?” You take a moment to ponder, hearing the light sound of skin slapping from the other side of the phone. “Stop jerking off. No masturbating without my permission.”

Jeongin freezes, taking his hand off his cock slowly, writhing from the ruined orgasm he was so close to having. He sighs to catch his breath, pulling the phone away so you couldn’t hear how desperate he was to be touched. “What else?”

“Hm,” you scratch your chin in thought, “you have to show me everything you write in your little journal, got it?” “E-everything?”

“Everything.” Jeongin’s focus goes to the journal, looking at the depraved words he scratched onto the page. If he wants to get what he wants, he has to show you just so you know how much he wants this. “Yes ma’am.”

“One more thing, baby.” Jeongin’s worn out just from the first two rules. One more might break him. “Promise to take care of yourself. Brush your teeth, eat your meals, drink water, ya’know, things like that. I don’t want this rule broken.” 

The sudden overflowing of care and wholesomeness makes Jeongin’s face turn red, partially because you’re so sweet and partially because he forgot to eat dinner today. He nods before realizing this was a phone call and squeaking out a meek “of course”. 

“Don’t break these rules, okay sweetheart? Or else you’ll be punished… unless you break the last rule. Then I’ll give you a stern talking to. Got it?” 

“Yes, mommy. I understand.” Jeongin pulls his pants up, cock now fully limp. “See you tomorrow!” 

“Yup, good night.” You both hang up, setting your phones down for the night. Jeongin sits back in his desk chair, feeling victorious after finally cementing a sure-fire way to get his ass spanked. Before he goes to bed, he has to eat dinner. No way he’s getting a stern talking to!

🍓🍰🐤🍀💐🍯

When you come home from work on Monday, Jeongin’s watching TV (scrolling through his phone) while the girls were most likely asleep. You come sit next to him, tossing your bag next to the couch and figuratively letting your hair down, unbuttoning a few buttons on your work shirt. 

“Hey, Y/n! The girls were great today.” Jeongin smiles, folding his hands in his lap. “They went to bed like two hours ago. It was an early night for them I guess.” 

“Yeah, they were up early this morning, even before me.” You both laugh, finally being able to get down to business, at least in Jeongin’s mind. 

“I ate three meals today, I drank three bottles of water, and I brushed my teeth this morning.” Jeongin sounds oddly proud of himself for doing what most people think is the bare minimum. “I showered, I took my meds, and most importantly, I didn’t jerk off.” 

“Good boy.” You kiss him on the cheek and pull his head into your chest so he’s leaning on one of your tits. “My Jeonginnie is always so good for me.”

“Can I get a reward?” His puppy eyes look up at you, warming your heart from the long day at work. He looked so sweet and innocent, just pretty enough for you to destroy. 

“Hold on, baby. You didn’t forget the second rule, did you?” You tap the side of his head and point to his bookbag. “Show me your journal.” 

“B-but mommy, that’s embarrassing.” He whines, turning off your chest and to his bag, leaning away before unzipping his bag. “Do you have to?” 

“Don’t be bratty with me. I just called you my good boy!” You reach for the bag, but Jeongin pulls it back to him. He hides it behind his back, putting his nose up at you. “Jeongin…”

“No!”

“Give me the j-“

“Make me.”

You lean into him, suffocating the younger boy with your shadow. Now standing over him, you put your hands on his face, cupping his cheeks before one hand pulls back and harshly slaps him across his handsome face. He doesn’t whine in pain, though, he just moans. 

“M-more.” 

“What was that, baby?” 

He begins to repeat himself, but you slap him again before he can finish the word. His face is red as a tomato, and you don’t care whether that’s from your hand or his blushing. Looking down, you can clearly see how hard he is in his pants. You remove your hands from his face and press one down onto his bulge, making his face contort into a wince. 

“Does my little boy want me to touch his cock?” You taunt, tilting your head as if the answer isn’t obvious. “Or more importantly, does he deserve it?” 

“I’m n-not letting you read my journal.” 

You huff and straighten your posture, taking his wrist in your hand and making him stand up with you, leading him to your bedroom. You slam the door behind you just quiet enough not to wake the kids. When you turn around, Jeongin is bent over the bed with his pants down to his ankles. He’s shaking. You like that. 

“Take your clothes off, bitch.” He kicks his pants away while tossing his shirt off and pulling down his underwear at lighting speed. You sit on the bed and pat your lap, signaling Jeongin to bend over you, which he obediently does. “My little boy’s being bad today. Why?”

“I don’t want you reading what’s in my journal.” He sounds angry when you know it’s all for show. 

“You don’t think I already know what perverted filth is in there?” You spank him, quickly making a red mark on his pale ass. He groans, bucking his hips into your leg for some friction. “You just want mommy to treat you like this, don’t you?” 

“Yes mommy.” Another spank hits his ass, causing him to jolt forward. You bite your lip looking down at him, just now noticing how muscular he is. 

“Count for me.” You spank him again, and again, and again, as he pliantly counts and whines, his cock dangling below him fully erect. By the end, he’s out of breath, and he isn’t even doing any of the work. 

“Ten.” You pet his back while his ass is red as ever, looking like it can’t take any more hits of your palm. You kiss him on the shoulder, an especially soft moment after what just occurred. “Mommy?”

“Yes, dear?”

“I’ll show you my journal now.” He can’t move, but the journal is still out in his bag. 

“I’ll go get it, baby boy. Lay down on the pillows. I want to read your slutty little stories to you.” He gets off your lap and lays back while you go out to the living room to get the journal. You sift through his bag, looking back and forth between binders and folders, but you don’t see it anywhere. You bring the bag into the bedroom, tossing it on the bed. “Where is it?”

Jeongin does the same as you, sifting through the bag with no sight of his precious journal. His heart stops for a minute, beginning to break into a cold sweat. 

“Where did you see it last?” 

“I was writing in it during my comp class.” 

Lee Minho teaches that class. Your ex-husband teaches that class. This feels like the end of the world, and unlike earlier, you’re now genuinely angry. Your face begins to boil as you throw the bookbag off the bed and undress down to your panties. Climbing on top of Jeongin, you press your cunt down onto his cock, applying just enough pressure to make you both moan. 

“Dumb little boy wants to ruin me, don’t you?” You wrap your hands around his neck, not choking him, but rather threatening him. “You want Lee Minho to know about us. You want him to have your stupid fucking diary so he can read all of your slutty fantasies.” Your grip tightens around his neck slightly, and Jeongin looks like he’s in pure bliss. He can’t even defend himself. He loves this too much. 

“I love you, mommy.” He hums, leaning back into the bed as you begin to tease his cock with your slick panties, grinding against him. 

“You don’t love me, Jeongin. You just love when I treat you like my little toy.” You lean down to make a dark hickey on his neck, something his friends will surely tease him for the next day. “All mine. You’re only mine.” 

“Y-yes mommy. All yours. Only yours.” He moans loudly, suddenly nearing his high just from your grinding. The cloth of your panties feel like heaven. He can’t help it!

You look down to see him shoot his load on himself, spurts of his hot cum covering his abs and chest. He looks so pathetic, but at least he’s yours. 

Pushing your panties aside, you slip him inside you, overstimulating him with your tight cunt. You bounce a few times on him before stopping your movements completely, bending over to put your tits in his face. He grabs your tits and sucks them, jumping back and forth between them every couple of seconds. Your hands are still around his neck, keeping him down on the mattress, unable to move. 

“You love being mommy’s toy, huh?” You start to choke him more as you pull your tits out of his face, starting to ride him again. “Ah~ and mommy loves your cock, babydoll.” 

Jeongin’s overwhelmed. He just came but he feels his second orgasm rapidly approaching. He can’t think or speak. All he can do is moan and whine “mommy” over and over again. 

“Let me try something, my little prince.” That was always his favorite pet name you gave him. He thought he was about to cum, but you pull off of him, rotating your body so Jeongin has a perfect view of your ass. You sink back down onto him, his cock filling up your pussy again. 

He felt so relieved being inside your warm cunt again, but now you start riding him harder and faster, his cock hitting so deep inside you with each thrust. He can’t hold it anymore. Jeongin’s cum fills you up, dripping down out of your pussy and onto the base of his cock. 

He feels so weak under you. He’s in pain from the overstimulation, but he can’t deny that he adores feeling like this. The safe word isn’t even in his mind. He just wants you. 

“Mommy’s gonna cum, alright?” You start to tighten around him, your movements getting sloppy and labored. “Hold my hips like a good boy. I want you to fuck me just like this.” 

Jeongin’s hands hesitantly move to your hips, holding you up while his hips begin to stutter and thrust into you, fucking his cum deeper inside you. The convulsions of your dripping pussy is making his head spin. If he cums again, he’ll be so embarrassed, but the more he fucks you, the more his cock twitches. 

“Good little boy. Such a nice cock, baby. Mm, so good.” Words mindlessly fly out of your mouth as you slam your ass against him, forcing him to bottom out. Neither of you move as you cum on him, your cunt tightening its grip on his length. Jeongin shuts his eyes as he ruts into you, cumming the same time as you. It feels euphoric to both of you. Jeongin’s hands move from your hips to your ass, massaging the skin as you come down from your highs. 

“Thank you, mommy.” Jeongin whines as you get off of him, cum dripping out of you onto Jeongin. You hold it in as best you can as you lay down next to him, your legs feeling too fuzzy to get you anywhere. Jeongin nuzzles into your chest, holding you as close to him as possible. 

You kiss his forehead before getting up to clean the mess you two made, mostly the mess between your legs. Coming back with water for your pretty little submissive, you lay back down to cuddle with your sweet boy. 

“You need to get that journal back, Jeongin.”

“I will, Y/n. Don’t worry. No one will read it.” 

🍓🍰🐤🍀💐🍯

His finger wraps around the thin paper to flip the page, only getting a fourth of the way through the messy journal. Everything is vile, and more importantly, everything is about his ex-wife. 

Lee Minho’s cock is hard in his hand as he strokes himself back and forth, biting down on his lip so he doesn’t moan too loudly to alert his girlfriend in the other room. He can’t believe the raunchy smut he’s reading can turn him on this much. 

“F-fuck, Y/n. My cock is so much better than this college boy’s.” 

Minho gets vivid flashbacks to him dominating you, tying you up and spanking you with his paddle. Your teary eyes were always his favorite, especially when the tears were mixed with his cum. 

He looks back at the page after returning from his haze of days gone by. His cock starts to twitch as his eyes skim the page, focusing on the parts with your name.

Y/n’s arm enters my peripheral as she hits me again with her flogger, the leather straps leaving red marks against my back. I lose balance, unable to catch myself on the hands that are cuffed behind me. I fall onto my face, and Y/n laughs at my pathetic form. “Dumb slut can’t even stay on his knees for his mistress.” Her heel presses against my spine, arching my back with force. “Ten more, then I’ll remove the cage, got it?”

Minho tosses the book aside as his pace quickens, cumming all over his lap. He looks down at the mess he made, his sweatpants covered in the reminder that he’s still head-over-heels for his ex-wife. 

taglist: @milkym00n​ @sparklysung​ @fanchengsgf​ @sailorhyunjinz @gothicstay​ if you wanna be tagged in part four, send me an ask :)

[sun-summoning]

part ii | part iii | part iv

after speaking to kido, sakura rushes home. when she calms down from the rage that nearly had her crush his throat, sakura can admit that she doesn’t really think this is him. he knew a lot about her for someone that was supposed to have been locked up all this time, but he seemed genuinely surprised to hear that sarada had been taken, if not disappointed. he fit the profile of what shikamaru and kakashi thought -- that someone wanted sarada for her eyes -- but sakura can’t stop the nagging feeling that somehow this runs deeper.

back in her apartment, megumi’s body is right where she left it, and sakura feels awful for having moved so mechanically. megumi was an orphan, but she was still someone’s little girl. ashamed, sakura lays a sheet over her and swears she’ll do more later.

she heads to her bedroom and begins her work. alone, she summons one of the cats she’d made a contract with shortly after her marriage. the black cat is sleek and holds himself confidently. he’s always been an efficient one, quick to do as she needs and be competent about it. he regards sakura with a cock of his head.

“sarada’s been taken.”

“your daughter.”

“yes.” 

the cat nods. “i shall inform the clowder. if anyone spots her, i will let you know.”

“thank you.” sakura pauses, self-conscious for needing to rely on everybody else for this part. “if you...if any of you are able to come into contact with sasuke-kun, can you pease let him know too?”

“of course.”

“thank you.” sakura promises to provide the usual exchange at a later time and the cat disappears with a puff of smoke. she heads to her bedroom and she begins to pack in silence. 

her movements are as meticulous as they are automatic, done just so she’s ready to leave the moment she knows where she needs to go. her medkit is stocked. her bag has scrolls, weapons, supplies, and sarada’s favourite toy. she changes out of her days clothes and into the leggings and turtleneck of a uniform she hasn’t worn in years. her cloak is in the front closet. she needs to change her boots. she’ll put on the boots now. she leaves the armour on her bed to don later. right now, they only hinder her movements. she goes to the drawer where her mask hides in plain sight among other trinkets and knick knacks, and on the dresser she notices a flower.

sakura stills as she takes in the detail she must have missed in her earlier haste. she considers the simple glass vase and the single red flower sitting in it. its petals curl at the ends and some are even missing. 

this flower has travelled and as sakura considers what it is, she knows it’s travelled far. 

-

konoha became unbearable by the time she tuned twenty. it's so petty and selfish and she'd never say it aloud, but she hated seeing everyone else so happy. she's happy too -- has so many reasons to be -- but she couldn’t help the nagging jealousy she feels when ino declined her invitations because she was going to see sai or when naruto prioritized her almost always only to head home to hinata.

she wanted to be someone's too. she wanted to be their focus and heart and home, but sakura already knew who her someone was and knew that on some level she was his too, so all she needs to do right now is wait.

most of the time, sakura wasn’t bitter. being apart from him wasn't unfamiliar, nor the steadfastness, nor the hope that one day this will pay off one day, nor the self reminders that what she felt was irrelevant as long as sasuke knew and was comforted by the fact that she would always love him.

to suppress her frustrations rather than confront them, sakura worked. she worked tirelessly and relentlessly and by nineteen, they'd named her the greatest medical ninja konoha has ever seen for her accomplishments, ideas, and innovations.

this took her to suna at twenty and to ame at twenty-one to help establish their own clinics.

“i have a gift for you,” ino told her before she left. 

sakura expected a ribbon or a piece of jewellery or that new book on poisons she mentioned she was interested in. instead, ino handed her a bag. its contents shift, imbalanced, and inside sakura finds a potted plant. 

“a flower?”

“not just any flower, you ungrateful bitch.” ino pointed at her accusingly and then at the plant. its petals are a bright red with darker flecks at their base. “i made it.”

“you made it?”

“yes. you know me, interrogating and mind-reading by day, splicing plants together and making my own by night.”

“that’s sad.”

“fuck you. you’re sad.”

sakura laughed and ino laughed too but it got a bit sad because ino probably definitely knew that sakura was sad. “anyway,” ino continued, “we’ll call it the sakuino flower--”

“how creative.”

“--and i expect you to keep it alive through all of your travels.”

sakura frowned at ino, wondering if ino understood that a potted plant had no place in her travels, but ino didn’t seem to care. moreover, this particular thing didn’t seem to have the ability to survive in the desert climate she was going to be living in for the next six months. 

when sakura expressed as much, ino waved the matter off. “deal with it,” she said, giving sakura one last hug. “you’re one of the brightest minds to come out of this village. you’ll figure something out.”

-

its common name is the fire poppy, having originated from the fire country but somehow managing to survive in the deserts of wind country as well. the flower is know for its vibrant red petals, eye-catching and jarring across the barren brown it’s normally found in. sakura had to play with the original plant’s physiology when she first moved to ensure it could survive the alternate climate. in her spare time, when she wasn’t working with the kids, she deigned to work with her plant, eventually working on cloning the original. at some point she’d given one to a nurse she worked with who much admired the first, and gaara asked if he could try planting them in his garden. from there, the spores began to spread.

“why the fire poppy?”

was this someone from suna?

sakura considers the obvious motivation of revenge, but who would even want that? there were people who didn’t appreciate her friendship with kankuro or any of his siblings. perhaps an apprentice of chiyo’s who blamed sakura for not saving her when she gave her life for gaara’s. worse, perhaps someone that once worked sasori who resented her for his demise. or maybe someone she, sadly, can’t even remember. a patient she lost during the war whose family hated her.

sakura truly cannot pinpoint a motivation for this, much less a person. 

especially a person that would understand the meaning of this flower for her. 

ino would never give her this flower. ino would have scoffed at it and created her own. sarada couldn’t have picked it today. and sasuke certainly couldn’t have left it for her.

someone was in her apartment. someone brought it here. 

was it here before?

sakura considers the poppy and forces herself to keep calm. stay logical, she demands. stay smart. was the poppy there before? no, she thinks at first. she would have seen it. she’s certain she would have seen it.

but, she can accept, it’s possible she might have missed it. sarada was taken. her babysitter was murdered. it wouldn’t be surprising if sakura missed it. but sakura doesn’t miss things. right?

“don’t gaslight yourself,” she orders. 

no, she knows. the flower was not there before, meaning in between her going to kakashi, going to the prison, and then running back home, whoever took her daughter came back.

or worse, there was a team involved and one was with her child and another came back for her. 

sakura curses, wishing she’d put on her black ops armour earlier, because whoever brought the flower here is now making their presence known. she senses two people before she sees them and is unsurprised to find sudden flares of strength.

the bedroom is small and they’re in a building. she needs to take this outside, but where? there’s too much risk for others getting hurt in the crossfire. that’s why this was supposed to stay quiet. that’s why this will stay quiet.

they step out of the shadows and sakura assesses them quickly. one male, one female, both fairly young based on stature and development, maybe early twenties at the oldest. they’ll have agility on her, but they won’t have her experience. 

the man holds a chokuto. good. an advantage. sakura is excellent at fighting against such a weapon. if they’re foolish enough to use her husband’s favourite sort of blade, perhaps they didn’t do enough research on her. perhaps they were hired? but if they were unprepared, then were they really here to kill her? 

are they here to distract her?

that thought fills sakura with dread. is someone trying to keep her busy so she can’t get to sarada on time?

the woman shifts, one leg sliding to the side as she raises her hands. she holds no weapons, therefore she is the weapon. sakura knows all about that. she’ll need to be careful with this one. but she still has a holster on her thigh. it’s thinner that the usual styles. maybe a couple kunai, but more likely a set of sebon. this one is smart then. she’ll know precisely where she needs to hit sakura to stop her.

“haruno sakura,” the man greets with a short nod.

so it is her fault.

if this was about sasuke, about the uchiha, they would know her married name. this is about her, and for that sakura feels worse. her baby was taken and why? just to hurt sakura before killing her? sarada was who knows where with surely no one that could be good and all just to hurt sakura?

sakura snarls, furious in a way only a mother could be, and she feels the chakra pulsing around her fists.

“where is my daughter?”

their masks hide any expressions. they remain at ease in the face of her rage, shockingly unafraid of this woman that can level mountains. 

good, sakura thinks. let them be brave. let them come at her like fools. 

she runs through the bedroom door to get to the living room where there’s at least more space to maneuver. the man leaps and brings his blade down upon her, but sakura manages to shift to the side. careful to not be forced into a corner, she spins out of his range and into the open middle until the woman runs past her partner and takes sakura on hand-to-hand.

she matches sakura’s punches and kicks blow for blow. she’s good, sakura thinks nervously. and she’s fast. she’s small, maybe half a head shorter than sakura, so she puts her weight behind every quick jab. sakura gives most of her attention to the woman, but keeps a wary on eye on the man who sheathes his chokuto.

what as he planning?

it takes that one moment for the woman to catch her unaware. 

sakura chokes on her breath as the woman thrusts a senbon into her shoulder. the shock from that slows her down enough so she can lodge in a second.

“shit,” sakura curses as she stumbles back. she rips the senbon out, but she feels her left arm begin to go numb from the struck pressure point. “what did you do--”

sakura’s eyes widen she she feels something foreign begin to course through her. she considers the senbon, dark with her blood and likely something else. there’s a metallic smell that isn’t from the weapon, and sakura knows she’s been poisoned.

however, her body doesn’t bother to fight it. 

sakura watches her opponents, trying to understand how she’s been poisoned with something she’s immune to and just what poison this might be. she’s immune to everything in konoha’s own collection, as well as the ones she shares with shizune.

which poison is this?

does that matter?

sakura scowls at the two people involved in her daughter’s kidnapping and reminds herself that she can take them on one-handed just fine. she pulls her right hand into a fist and charges. the man is closest, so she lunges at him with a chakra-laden punch that sends him barreling into the wall. 

she grabs the front of his shirt and as she pulls him forward, his mask falls away to reveal green eyes, cold and lifeless, and a black diamond under his left eye that makes her uneasy.

sakura stares at the man, confused, because she knows this face.

she knows him.

her fear and pain and worry makes it hard to focus, but knows him. 

focus.

finally, it clicks. 

“isao?”

she thinks she might have seen something like recognition in his eyes. that doesn’t long though. she left herself open, and his partner stabs her shoulder. sakura releases isao with a cry before the woman punches her in the back of the head and everything goes dark.

-

the sun is up when sakura begins to stir. she hears the birds chirping and people outside going about their days. but the buzz of the television is missing, as are the small thuds of sarada’s steps. where is sarada? sakura wonders hazily, lazily, not quite understanding yet.

where is sarada?

her eyes widen and she sits up so quickly her stomach rolls.

“careful.” tsunade comes into view, steadying sakura and checking her for any problems. “you’re still healing.”

she’s in her own bed. she’s not at the hospital. she got knocked out and the assassins got away. she should’ve done something to track them. dammit. was she so arrogant she didn’t have a failsafe in place for if she didn’t simply beat them? sakura punches the bed, earning a disapproving frown from shizune on her other side.

“there was poison in your system.” 

“it was one of ours,” sakura admits warily. 

“yes. there are very few people with access to those, much less this particular one.”

the one that the assassin used was meant to render a victim paralyzed but still able to feel. it was a dreadful thing, meant only for the worst of interrogations. or, more accurately, for torture. sakura concocted it in her darkest moments at fourteen under shizune’s watchful eye. since then, while they’ve both had small handfuls of keen students, they’ve probably shared poisons from their personal roster with only five people at most.

for this particular poison, sakura knows only two people they showed it to, and only one of those was a student of sakura’s.

“how did you find me?”

tsunade rolls her eyes. “shizune sent you off to a prison from kakashi’s office. i figured i’d have to check on you shortly after. and it’s a good thing i did, stupid girl.”

“thank you.”

“don’t thank me. i’m scolding on you.”

“did they find anything useful?”

“no one’s been able to contact your husband.”

“right.”

“and they’re still under the impression that this has to do with the uchiha blood.” 

“they would be,” sakura mutters, too tired and in too good company to be anything but blunt.

shizune sighs. “do you know who came after you last night?” the flower is still where she left it on the dresser. shizune follows her gaze to the fire poppy, and all knowing with plants as well, shizune determines its origins. “how did that get here?”

“i think it was to taunt me.” sakura grimaces. “you were right.”

“about?”

“i think this is my fault.”

shizune’s eyes widen and quickly soften with sympathy. “none of this your fault,” she reminds sakura. 

tsunade crosses her arms. “enemies of yours then?”

“no.” sakura looks sad. “people i once loved.”

-

tbc

[btswishes]

Love me for who I am now

Bucky x Reader ( Chapter 1 )

Part1 / Next 

Summary: You apply for the Stark internship and end up getting it, so now you have 5 months to make a good impression to continue working with the Avengers.

A/N: This is my first Marvel fic and I am taking it as a challenge. It is opposite of what my account was made, but here I go. Sorry for any mistakes made, hope you enjoy it even a tiny bit.

Word count:  3,281

Warmings: fights, harsh language, not part of the original MCU 

Y/N- Your name Y/L/N:  Your Last Name

                                   --------------------------------------

  Through sleepless nights and dark circles, books and pens, through months of work you reached your goal. The moment you received the acceptance letter from Stark University you almost flew out the window without a fear in your mind. This was it!

  Time had passed since that moment, but it is still engraved in your mind- a memory keeping you strong during the hard midterms and piles of work, even the small glimmers of regret. Trying your best wasn’t an option, you could do only that and no less. It was no easy task, lost social life as much as you tried to keep it. You were really lucky you had good friends that understood and supported you. University wasn’t easy for anyone making this one even tougher. People of all ages, backgrounds and cultures were piled up with you in this building. The best of the best as the slogan said, the ones that proved themselves and emerged victorious.

  When you were young ,you used to spend a lot of time with your uncle at his places outside the country. He would introduce you to his work colleagues and things you had never seen before. There was a time where you would spend months on end with him. Not many memories were left from those moments in your head. At one point you spend a few years with him, your mother thought it would be good experience for you and it turned out to be nothing but the truth-at least you hoped so. You learned a lot from him and his friends, it felt like each spend day would offer you more knowledge in areas you never knew of. Computer work, ways of thinking and so much more that had become second nature to you.

  The sky was tinted in a wash of oranges, reds and yellows bleeding one into the other, swirling around the sun emitting them. The day was ending, but you found yourself filling up an application in the library, covered by the silence and smell of exam worry.

  Sponsored and founded by the one and only Tony Stark, this establishment offered an internship. Being part of the Avengers, Tony didn’t let just anyone from the students attending in, even if they were the best labeled by the school. It had been a year and a half since you started pushing yourself harder to be able to apply and there was nothing that could stop you. Pressing your finger over the enter button was very nerve wrecking yet simple. Even if it didn’t work out this year, you planned to do it again and again ,till he had no other choice but give you a chance.

  Usually F.R.I.D.A.Y. went over everything and left only the applications worth going over by Tony himself or Pepper. The next 5 weeks for you were very stressful, but there was nothing more you could do but wait and focus on your own work. The first person you wanted to tell about this was your uncle. He went to work in some distant place where they had no internet so you switched to mail. Not as much paper under his name passed through your hands, as he had stopped answering you. You missed him, but the muddy childhood memories kind of compensated for that.

“Did you send it in?” the phone muffled a bit the sweet voice coming from the speaker 

“Yeah, a few days ago actually.” You answered with a gentle sigh

“And no answer yet?” the girl’s pitch rose at the end of the sentence, amazed at that what she just heard

“I know, I know. Think about it though Nea. Who knows how many applications get submitted. Someone has to brush through them after all.” defending the situation was a form of coping for you, made you feel hopeful.

“So you are trying to tell me Tony Stark’s interface or whatever it’s called, can’t sort them out in a couple of hours? Come on Y/N! You and I both know you are trying to make yourself feel better.” The small pause made you anxious over what Nea said “Listen.” A breathy start of the sentence “ I don’t mean to brag, but I think I am one of the people who know exactly how much you deserve this. You were never the studious type, plus that you were gone for years on end with that mysterious uncle of yours. I never expected you to suddenly go for Stark University. Your dream changed you, from this quiet kid to crazy ol’ you right now on the call with me.I ain’t letting you bust yourself up over this just because it didn’t happen the first time around-”

                Ding ding

  Nea’s deep speech was cut off before she could unleash herself completely, by the slight ring of your phone’s notification.

“Who tf has the audacity to text while the great me is giving this legendary –“

                Ding!

  The second time the sound sung out made her choke up with anger, you could almost see the fumes coming out of the phone.

“WHO IS IT!” a loud hiss pierced your ear

“Maybe if you gave me a minute I could answer your question.” Pulling the call down, your finger ran over the screen to the email, making your notification lamp blink like a car. Almost instantly it opened before your eyes and you gasped. The action made you swallow suddenly and cough out a bit ,giving poor Nea an idea about the level of shock you were in.

“What?What? You can’t just almost die and not tell me what is going on.” She proceeded with a not so tasteful interrogation.

“I-…they accepted my application…” at the end a small smile flowed over your lips contorting the sound coming out

“Stop!?” she choked up as well “You gotta be fucking with me!? No fucking way this is real!”

“I am honest. It says here that they liked my skill set, my grades and the way of thinking I presented in my essay. I got the spot Nea! I fucking did it!” you threw the phone on the bed letting it bounce as you started dancing.

“Of course you did! I told you! You will be working with THE AVENGERSSSS!” at some point it sounded like your best friend was more excited than you “When do you start?”

“Well…” taking a second to calm down and re-establish contact with your phone, you looked up the schedule that came attached with the email “…ok…so it says here that I will be starting on Monday so~ in 2 days? “

“So soon! Any requirements for the job miss Avenger’s sidekick?” and the teasing begins

“A list, surprisingly.” Rolling onto your back, you held the screen away and above your face, scrolling past “ I guess my first job will be with Dr. Banner in the lab. Apparently I will be given some sort of assignments throughout the 5 months work span. I will be monitored by Dr. Bruce Banner and the grading, I guess if you can call It that ,will be done by Tony Stark himself.”

“Basically Hulk will be your babysitter.” once this girl starts teasing she never stops even in amazing situations such as this one, good thing you loved her “That sounds so cool though! You will be able to meet Captain America and Black Widow~! I am so jelly of you I swear! When you leave work make sure to wait for someone from the group to walk by, omgggg I am fangirling so much right now.What if you go to dinners with them!?AAAAA!”

“Fun thing about that.” Your eyes landed on the last paragraph of the email “It says here that I am supposed to move into the compound and stay there till further notice. The whole idea is that if I do things well I will get a permanent job. Weird…” you hummed

“Weird !? How? That is so cool! Who knows you might even become an Avenger! You will be living with them anyways.” at this point Nea was either not breathing or hyperventilating so fast you couldn’t hear it

“Don’t be ridiculous.” your attention landed once more on the thought process you had a moment ago “I don’t get one thing. They say here that my PE grades combined with my IT and overall studies make me a great candidate, but I don’t remember sports being a requirement at all, or even providing them in the first place. Does it mean that if my grades were low in that department I wouldn’t have gotten the spot?”

“I guess people of science aren’t that flexible. Who cares anyways! You got in, no ifs and buts. I am telling you, at this point you could be an Avenger.” poor girl began thinking of names and suit designs for you “ Hurry up and pack those bags before I drop by with take away, so we can gossip over Steve Rogers’s abs.”

“Um…don’t get me wrong he is super hot, I just see the Cap more like an older brother figure than anything.” It was true, you looked up to him since the first time you studied about the Civil War. Fearless, gave his life in a way for his people, astonishing man over all.

“Hey! Let me drool over him! You were always more of a Winter Soldier fan anyways.” Nea pouted audibly . Her words made some lone memory pop up in your head, but it was as murky as the rest. “I don’t know why I am interested in him. Somehow his look is very nostalgic and rugged. Anyways. ”you shook your head out of the mental image of the soldier “I will go pack up, tell my parents and fix up all my documents. Probably find some stuff from former Stark employees online. I want to have a bit of an idea of what he expects and what I am getting myself into.”

“Fine fine, you could have just said you like troubled guys. You were the one who was happy Loki got a second chance after all. I will be over in like 3 hours.” She informed you

“Hey! He deserved to redeem himself, he was used!” a firm Loki supporter as always “Ok then, see ya.”

   Hanging up the call you placed your phone to charge and rolled off your bed. The email gave vague information about what you needed, but clothing wise you would still be able to come home and get stuff if you had to. What was on top of your priorities were papers, documents, all your research materials and tech. Those things had to be organized no matter what ,since they got you this far in the first place.

  Nae came over as planned and you two had a nice sleepover talking about you know who. The night came and left, letting the morning find you in your bed at 11am. Your forearm rested on top of your forehead in a relaxed manner, letting enough space for an exhale to linger in the air in front of you. Your mind was going over everything that was about to happen to you. It was one of your dreams, you worked for it nonstop day in day out, so why were you so worried about meeting the rest of the Avengers? Maybe it was just anxiety or fear of the unknown, yeah made sense.

  All you did during the day was make lists for every piece of tech you were binging with yourself. Things seemed to be in order, but worry kept nibbling on your bones. The moment of truth finally rolled up and so did your suitcase in front of your house. Nea came to send you off as she promised.

“Sweetie, make sure to call us every day. Eat well, don’t overwork yourself and-“ your mom went off with caution about anything and everything that came to mind

“Mom, you know I am going 3 blocks down from here right? Plus I can come home at any time I want to. I am not moving to Mars or getting arrested.” You smirked the panic away from her, giving them a big hug.

“Call me or text me when you get there.” Nea pulled you in, whispering in your ear as quietly as possible “And don’t forget to sneak me a booty pick of good ol’Cap. You know what they say-”

“That is America’s ass.” Your voice came out in a mocking tone

“That i-…let me at least finish it by myself! Geez!” she pushed you towards the door “Ok ok, go now before you spoil me something else” her arms crossed in front of her chest

  The walk wasn’t that long, you were too invested in your own thoughts to notice when the time and distance had passed. The glistening windows of the compound building shined into your eyes. Your lungs filled up with a breath that they kept in for a moment, before releasing it back in the outside world. Pulling out the documents you stepped in. The fresh smelling air hit you making you close one eye for a second.

People were walking around you fast and concentrated. Some looked in a hurry, others were on break with a cup of coffee and a strain-leaving expression.

 Your feet, as slightly shaky as they were, took you right up to the front desk were a lady with a dark rich red colored uniform looked at you. She flashed a professional smile, her eyes asking for your purpose.

“Um, hello. My name is Y/N -Y/L/N.” she saw the logo on your papers and gasped

“You must be the new intern Mr. Stark told us about.” She signed something and reached out “Can you give me your hand for a second.” Your fingers didn’t go past the surface of the desk when she pocked your skin. Pulling in your extremity, your palm wrapped around the spot that began to sting a bit “Don’t worry about it. This is your identification pass. Fancy, no?” she smiled winking. Her body stood up as she pointed at the elevator far in the back of the foyer.

  Instructions were given with each step of the way, calming your nerves a bit. The moment you found yourself inside the elevator she pulled your hand to the sensor on the wall next to the buttons.

Recognized: Code 2514. Welcome Miss Y/N  

 Your head shot up when F.R.I.D.Y.’s voice echoed in the small space. The women smiled giving you a small nod and stepped out of the vicinity. Once her body was outside ,the doors slid closed. Over them glowed a protective blue light layering over the material like a soft veil.

 It felt like you weren’t moving an inch. Your body flinched when the sun stung at your eyes from the window. Your gaze landed over the view of the city, as you went higher and higher, ascending into the clouds  The blues and yellows were covering the inside of the elevator, such vibrant and lovely colors warming your body. For a moment your heart felt heavy- lost memory tugged onto it again. An often occurrence lately, yet you kept brushing off as deja vu. 

Floor 134. Welcome to the Avenger’s compound Miss Y/N

“134!?” the numbers cracked out with your voice. The interface made you turn towards the opposite opening doors revealing a room as big as a hall, if not almost a stadium. The ceiling was high being the lid to this round area. Your heart beat increased pumping blood to your body, dilating your pupils at least twice their original size. It look amazing, almost like you had just entered heaven. The walls were white, the furniture was perfectly placed and cream colored. Stepping outside you jumped at the sound of the elevator doors closing behind you. 

“Wow” escaped your lips, your hand pulling the suitcase closer. So this was the common room or the shared space. The windows were so big they were practically a wall of their own. The bright rays were making themselves at home giving the white paint a new color with each passing minute. The ceilings were probably the equivalent of 3 floors in height. There was this weird feeling of home inside, a bit of isolation maybe mixed in. 

“Miss Y/N?” your head swung to the side when you recognized that shy but bright smile. Throwing the papers on top of your suitcase, you extended your arm at the man.

“Ah.” Good thing your mind automatically responds politely to people without you giving it much thought “Dr. Banner. It is my pleasure to make your acquaintance.” you shook his hand gently a couple of times and let go ,finding the papers and showing them to him “My name is Y/N-Y/L/N.” gentle bow and a smile followed the words skillfully chosen

“Welcome Welcome. Tony is out right now so I might be the only one actively walking around the compound. Well…”he scratched the back of his neck, lightly hunching over with a sheepish smile “I am one of the people you will be working under anyways, so I guess it is good that I came to get you. I would love to show you the lab, but I am sure you would like to set up your things first.” You nodded and he showed you to your room. The corridor had 3 tall doors scattered on the walls, all looking modern and elegant.

“This is the side where usually we have our female members. Natasha and Wanda will be your nextdoor neighbors. Hope it won’t be any trouble.” Bruce looked at you ,when an aggressive shake took over your neck

“No, no. Not at all sir. I am very grateful to have such amazing heroes next to me. As a matter of fact won’t they be troubled with me here?” and here came the normal anxiety that you had for everything

“I am sure they will like you. Don’t worry about it.” Bruce stepped next to the door and waved you over “You don’t have a key or a door handle as a matter of fact. Tony’s idea, don’t ask. If you got up here on your own I assume he made the girls downstairs give you an identification implant. That is basically your entrance for everything here. Kind of an Avengers thing.” You nodded and him wiggling his fingers like a spell. Placing your hand on the door like he told you activated F.R.I.D.A.Y.

Recognized: Y/N. Access and ownership granted.

  The metal frame slid open and you found yourself standing before a big room. It was nicely furnished. The desk was big enough for you to work on it and have everything around. Bookshelves empty and ready to be used on your left and a large bed on your right flush against the wall. The window was once more its own wall right in front of you standing behind the desk. The bathroom door was opening a space before the shelf the same color as the paint in the common room.

“I will let you set up. If you need anything F.R.I.D.A.Y. is always here. The room is interactive, you can ask exactly what works under the interface’s control. The door is one.Take your time.”he was on his way out “Would you like some coffee or tea?”

“I would like some tea, thank you very much.” Bruce flashed you a smile “F.R.I.D.A.Y. the door please.”

Door closed 

  Done as said and requested, clicking behind you. 

Would you like an extensive list of my functions as an assistant?

“Please do.”

[bombshellbois]

Mommy Issues

@harringroveweekoflove

Harringrove Week of Love Day 4: School Dance

Rating: T

Words: 1633

Summary: Steve and Billy have a philosophical discussion that they're both way too sober to have.

“Are you a Mama Bird or a Mama Bear?”

The question comes way too early in the dance when the kids are only just barely beginning to cross party lines and venture into the neutral ground that is the dance floor. Steve has only had one cup of punch and he barely spiked it because he’s trying to make the flask in his jacket pocket last. So he still feels way too sober for this brand of bullshit. 

“Hargrove,” he sighs. “We’re the only people between the ages of 16 and 40 at this dance.” He doesn’t have a follow up for that. He could end it with ‘Could you not be a dick?’ but he’s honestly not sure that’s in the cards when it’s Billy. Sure, he’s trying to be ‘better’ in some vague and unidentified way, and he is here with Steve acting as emergency chaperones for the school dance since there’s a shortage of people willing to be out after dark in this town these days. He just still doesn’t do the ‘nice’ thing. Ever. So Steve just kind of leaves the sentiment hanging and hopes Billy takes something away from it. 

“Please. You’re a 40-year-old woman at heart,” Billy scoffs, pulling a cigarette from the packet in the breast pocket of his white dress shirt. Which looks annoyingly good on him. He even buttoned it all the way up. Steve isn’t sure if that’s because of the formal setting or the scar on his chest, but the end result is the same. Billy Hargrove can absolutely pull off shirts with high collars and Steve has to live with that knowledge. “So. Are you a Mama Bird or a Mama Bear?”

“Dude, I don’t even know what that means,” Steve groans. “I’m not a mom at all.” Glorified babysitter who doesn’t actually get paid and spends more time fighting monsters than trying to monitor who’s watching a scrambled porn channel, sure. Mom? No way. 

“I saw that dish towel over your shoulder at Byers’ place. You’re a mom.” Billy looks at his cigarette like he’s really contemplating lighting it. 

“You can’t smoke in here.” Steve realizes a moment too late how that sounded, and Billy is already grinning widely. No taking that back now. 

“Yes, Mama Steve,” he says, tucking the cigarette behind his ear. 

Steve downs the rest of his punch. He’s kind of surprised that Billy remembers he was wearing a towel over his shoulder almost a year ago when he’d be hard-pressed to remember a single thing Billy was wearing that night, much less some accessory. But then again, he’s pretty sure he got a concussion that night too so… that probably has something to do with it. 

Halfway through the night, Mike and El have ventured out onto the dance floor. They’re probably a little too warm and snuggly for Hopper’s preferences but he’s been remanded to staying home and watching The Magnificent Seven again. Steve has no doubt he’s watching the clock to get a head start on beating the traffic on that 9 pm pickup time. 

Dustin and Will are huddled in the safety of the boys’ side of the gymnasium, heads together like they’re forming some kind of strategy. Except they never actually make any attempt to move or anything. Steve isn’t even sure if Dustin has permission to dance at this thing. Long-distance relationships have too many nuances and kudos to Dustin for trying one right out the gate. He’s a brave kid. 

Max and Lewis are loitering by the punch bowl and every time Max makes a vague motion towards the dance floor, Lucas appears to look around and then decline. Steve pauses in his kid check to follow one of Lucas’s covert glances to where Billy is staring the kid down from across the room. Well, that’s probably something he’s gonna have to deal with because who else is going to? 

Steve comes back to stand beside Billy, pulling the flask from his pocket and offering it up. “So… what does that stuff mean?” he asks, because he has to make conversation about something, and what do he and Billy even have to talk about that’s not horrifying? 

Billy reluctantly pulls his eyes away from where he’s glaring at Lucas. “What?”

“Bears and birds. What was that about?”

Billy takes the flask, shakes it experimentally, and pours a large amount into his cup of punch. Steve’s hopes of even getting a mild buzz to offset the pain of this whole affair drain into Billy’s cup with too much of his stash. “Christ, Harrington, didn’t you even pass the animal chapter in biology?”

This is going great. “Pretend I slept through most of it.”

Billy rolls his eyes and takes a sip from his punch. Then he empties the flask into it entirely before handing it back to Steve. “You some kind of superhero or something?”

“Sorry?” Steve tucks the empty flask back away, making a mental note to never try and share with Billy again. 

“No parents, no sleeping, chasing monsters with a fucking bat…”

“I’ve got parents.”

Billy takes a longer sip from his punch and sighs out through his nose. “You’ve got landlords. That’s what you’ve got.”

Steve takes a breath. Counts to five. Reminds himself that dealt with a Russian interrogator for longer than he’s dealt with Billy so far, and if that didn’t kill him then neither will this. And he only has to deal with him for another 90 minutes. 

“What’s the difference between a Mama Bird and a Mama Bear?” he asks again. 

Billy looks him up and down, and for a second, Steve thinks he’s going to refuse. Make some snide comment and put them right back at the place they’ve been stuck for weeks and months now, with Billy hovering around the edges of Steve’s life while trying to re-integrate himself with Max. Seems like if anything, he’s at least realized that Max is something good in his life and that he’s a little short on good things so he should probably hold onto that. 

“It’s like… a mama bear is gonna protect her kid, right? Baby bears are all cute and hikers think they can just go pet it because it’s friendly and then the mom shows up and rips them apart,” Billy says. Steve is sure he notices that Max grabs Lucas’s hand and drags him onto the dance floor, but he doesn’t comment on it, and that’s some growth right there. 

“That’s horrifying,” Steve says in a conversational tone that implies he understands and Billy should continue. 

“Where the mama bird straight up shoves her kids out of the nest so they’ll learn to fly.”

“That’s… also horrifying,” Steve says, in a new tone that implies that… that’s horrifying. “Mama birds are assholes.”

“You gotta show the kids the door sometime, or they’ll sit in the nest forever and eventually starve when winter comes,” Billy says, like that somehow makes it less terrible. Send a kid plummeting towards the ground to teach them to leave home? Nest. Whatever. 

“Well, I wanna be the bear then.” 

Billy looks him over, a look on his face that Steve can’t for the life of him decipher. “Yeah. You are a Mama Bear, aren’t you? You chase all the monsters away.”

Steve shrugs. “I mean, I’m not gonna leave that up to Dustin. Have you ever seen him swing anything? That kid is a goalie at best.” And not a great goalie either. Passable, but he’s definitely not someone you trust with hitting anything. 

“What happens when the monsters come and Mama Steve left for college?” Billy presses. 

“I’m not going anywhere.” Steve has a stack of college rejection letters that speak to that, but Billy doesn’t need to know that. But he’s also stopped applying because one, he’s not smart enough to get in. Obviously. And two, seriously, none of these kids can get any power behind a swing. Someone with a decent batting average has to be around. “You talk like you’d rather throw a kid off a ledge and hope for the best.”

“Yeah, because that’s how you find out if they’re gonna make it,” Billy says, taking another swig from his punch. 

Steve doesn’t think that’s remotely true. Billy is no bird, even if he’d like to be. He did a lot of damage overstepping every boundary ever while he was trying to keep an eye on Max, and maybe he’s scared of doing it again. Maybe. They don’t exactly talk about stuff like fear and emotions. Or much of anything unless they’re really bored and forced to make conversation because they’re stuck around a bunch of kids. Conversations like this feel like poking the surface of a lake with a stick and trying to guess where the deep parts are.

Steve kind of wants to ask if Billy was once the baby bird in this weird National Geographic metaphor they have going. He doesn’t because he thinks he knows the answer and he also thinks that Billy will probably take a swing at him if he pokes. They’re not there yet, and Steve hasn’t figured out if they’re heading there or not. 

“Well I know they’re gonna make it,” Steve says, taking Billy's cup of punch and draining it because he really needs at least a bare-bones burn down the back of his throat to finish this conversation. “Because I’m gonna be here.”

Billy eyes him, but he doesn’t argue. Eventually, he just scoffs and rolls his eyes. “Fine. Whatever. But I’m kicking all of these brats out of Hawkins when they go to college. We’re not staying in this hick monster town forever.” 

Now that is a level of Mama Bird that Steve can work with. “Deal.”

[aimeelouart]

Ok I've spent a few months lurking and just being a lil too nervous to ask about The Royal House Perdel, but now that I've read the premise ohmygod I love it. I would pay actual money to read it as a book one day.

WHAT. You’re my favorite now. I love you. Take my firstborn.

Since I assume you’re also here for FF7, have a little gift writing of my protag at age 7 hopping dimensions and interacting with the SSC Firsts.

They should have known something was off when they were able to corner Cloud so quickly, but they definitely figured it out when he started giggling.

“Cloud…?” Sephiroth asked cautiously, crouched a short distance from him.

“Pfft, ahaha, your faces!” He said, pointing and covering his mouth with the other hand. Bright orange-red bled out from the root of his hair, spreading down as the strands lengthened and curled. He grew a little taller, a little ganglier, and his face…

Not his face. That wasn’t Cloud at all, though how the laughing girl had accomplished such an effective disguise was a question for another time.

“Who the hell are you!” Genesis exploded. “Where is Cloud!”

“He’s busy,” the little girl said, breaking off her laughter to stick out her tongue at them. “Meanie. He’s following a Virtue! You can’t interrupt that!”

Sephiroth growled, standing up. “Genesis, with me. Angeal, start a conference call. We will begin where we lost Cloud.” He and Genesis darted off, leaving Angeal with the strange new child.

“Wonderful,” he sighed, pulling out his PHS and doing as Sephiroth had commanded. “Another one.” He caught the girl’s arm when she nonchalantly tried to waltz past him. “And where do you think you’re going?”

She blinked. “That way,” she said, pointing.

“Not when you’ve⁠—is that Cloud’s hair?” There was a tuft of pale golden hair clenched in her hand.

“Duh,” she said, “that’s the rule for the spell. ‘A dear thing, freely given. Closer to the skin, more power riven.’”

Angeal struggled to parse through the bewildering statement. “Because Cloud gave you his hair, you were able to...cast a spell to look like him?” He tilted her arm, looking her over for materia, but saw nothing. “Where’s your materia?”

She blinked at him. “What’s materia?”

He decided to abandon the line of inquiry entirely. “Where are your parents?”

Her expression turned sheepish. She scuffed the toe of her sandal across the concrete. “Umm...Granda’ is gonna come find me soon...I’m probably in trouble.”

For the first time, Angeal noticed the glittering jewels held in the intricate lacework of her sandals. They certainly weren’t materia, but they did tell him that her parents must have been very wealthy. “And why are you in trouble?”

She flushed and looked away. “I’m not s’pposed to go through the Gates…” she mumbled.

“The gates?”

“The Gates Between. The ones that cross the Empty Spaces.” She stared down at her feet, and nervously plucked at the hem of her skirt. “Granda’ can open the Gates cuz he’s Imperator, and I can cuz I’m a Mage but he says I’m too little. I’m not supposed to be here, but...but it was calling me! I had to!” She looked up at him with wide, unnatural golden eyes and a pleading little pout.

He had absolutely no idea what she was talking about.

⁠—

Genesis took one look at the little redhead sleeping contentedly against Angeal’s shoulder and said “no, no, we already have one, put that back.”

Angeal looked tired and a little defeated, leveling Genesis with an unimpressed glance. With Cloud in the wind, all they could do now was wait for some sign of his whereabouts—probably in the form of demolished ShinRa property. Which left them to deal with everything else for a while instead.

“Believe me,” he said, “I’m not particularly happy about this either. But her parents are impossible to find. She doesn’t exist in any records—and I do mean any records. Even the Turks can’t find anything. And I can’t exactly just leave her with someone.”

Genesis narrowed his eyes. “Why not?”

“She has...abilities. You saw the disguise earlier, but there’s more.” He looked vaguely disturbed, glancing down at the kid like she was a ticking bomb. “A lot more.”

Sephiroth sighed. “Naturally. That seems to be the theme lately, strange children with inexplicable abilities showing up on our doorsteps.”

Finally, a hint of humor broke through Angeal’s tiredness. “Well, look on the bright side. At least this one actually trusts adults.”

“Too much, if she’s sleeping in your arms two seconds after meeting you,” Genesis scoffed.

“The polar opposite of Cloud,” Sephiroth observed, a little bit of humor entering his tone as well.

Angeal shook his head. “Her parents have the resources to keep her very sheltered, from what I’ve gathered. She seems to think that all adults are inherently trustworthy, especially if they, and I quote here, ‘look like they belong in Mama’s First Legion.’”

Genesis and Sephiroth both paused.

“That...makes it sound as if her parents have a personal militia at their disposal,” Genesis said.

“Yeah,” Angeal agreed wryly, “it does, doesn’t it?”

—

She was like a spot of sunshine in the interview room—not an interrogation room, though it did have a one-way mirror and an attached observation space—beaming up at Tseng as she sat on her knees in the chair across from him. Unsurprisingly, the Turks hadn’t exactly had a booster seat handy with their typical interview equipment.

“What’s your full name?” Tseng asked, soft and polite. It was only Angeal’s familiarity with the young man that allowed him to detect the very slight edge of unease in his smile.

Angeal could understand. It wasn’t often that even he was presented with such unconditional trust and guileless curiosity, and the Turks certainly must have experienced it much less.

The little girl opened her mouth and proceeded to deliver an extremely well-rehearsed answer. “Ameliora Octavia, First Mage of the House Perdel, Blessed of the Thirteen,” she rattled off cheerfully, “Crown Princess and heir to the Perdelesian Throne, granddaughter of the Virtuous Emperor Celsus Caesar Perdel and the Virtuous Empress Julia Atossa Perdel, daughter of Caius Julius Perdel, High King of the West, and Fera Tullia Perdel, High Queen of the East.” She gasped in a breath, having spent her entire lung capacity on the extended answer. “You can call me Lora, though, I don’t mind.” She resumed beaming at him.

Even Tseng didn’t seem to know what to say to that.

Then Lora frowned abruptly. “Oh wait, I wasn’t supposed to tell you that.”

Tseng managed to get ahold of himself. “Why is that, Lora?”

She looked up at the ceiling as if trying to remember something. “Granda says that, uh, if I’m ever with strangers I’m supposed to...uhm...tell them ‘Lora’ but nothing else and wait until one of the Praetorians comes to get me.”

“I see. Lora, do you know where you are?”

“Nope!” she said, apparently unbothered by this fact.

“Do you know how you got here?”

“Uh-huh, I opened the Gate in the Archive because it was calling to me in the Strings, and then I walked the Empty Spaces until it felt right and now I’m here.”

Angeal glanced discreetly at the other Turks in the observation room. None of them seemed to know what the hell she was saying either, which was very reassuring.

Tseng looked like he wanted to sigh but restrained himself. “Do you know how to get back home?”

For the first time, Lora flushed crimson and ducked her head. “Umm...nooo…”

“No?”

“‘S why I’m gonna be in trouble...I know how to walk through the Empty Spaces but I dunno how to walk back yet…Granda will come find me, though.”

“How will he know where to find you?”

She blinked at him, and for a moment her unnatural golden eyes glowed like they had a SOLDIER’s mako gleam. “Granda will always find me,” she said. “He swore on the Thirteen the day I was born. ‘Sides, I’m a Mage. Magistra Mara says I look like a supernova when she uses the Strings to see me.” She smiled. “I’m hard to miss.”

“I see,” said Tseng, which was a bald-faced lie. “How old are you, Lora?”

“Seven and a quarter,” she said very seriously.

—

“Hey.” A little hand tugged on the bottom of his jacket and Reno practically jumped out of his skin. Shiva, it was the tiny unnatural demon child. With trepidation, he half-turned and looked down at her.

She was beaming up at him like he’d just given her the best gift in the world. He was absolutely certain that if he picked her up she would snuggle into his arms without a second thought.

It was hands-down the creepiest fucking thing he’d ever seen in his life.

“What,” he bit out, anxious to get away without looking like he was getting away. He could feel Rude laughing at him silently.

“C’mere,” she said, motioning him down. Reno glanced at her babysitter of the hour—Hewley—whose mako eyes promised death if he dared to scare or upset her. Reno weighed the odds for a long second and then slowly crouched.

Immediately, she buried her hands in his hair and started petting and patting, a puzzled little furrow to her brows. “Hey,” he said, jerking back a little, “what do you think you’re doing!”

“I’ve never seen hair like this,” she responded, peering closer.

“You have red hair,” he pointed out, growing increasingly uncomfortable. He could kill her a dozen ways with barely a flick of his hand and she was playing with his hair?

It was unnatural!

“Nuh-uh, my hair’s gold-red and and curls. Yours is all sticky-uppy and looks like an apple.”

“Well, that’s just how it was when I was born!”

“Oh. Huh.” Apparently that was enough for her. She released his hair and looked to Rude instead and Reno felt exactly zero shame for how fast he got up and moved out of range of her creepy, sunshiny eyes.

She motioned Rude down in the same way. He went, a lot more willingy than Reno had, even though Reno knew for a fact that is partner was also pretty fucking creeped out by her. All the Turks were. There was no one—no one—who had ever treated them with such unconditional trust. The little princess was genuinely happy to see them. Even Tseng was freaked out. Even Veld was, though he took it in stride like he did everything else.

Lora plucked the sunglasses right from Rude’s face and put them on. Her mouth made a little ‘o’ of surprise.

“Why would you want dark glass over your eyes?” She asked, holding them in place and looking around curiously.

Without missing a beat, Rude pulled a spare set of sunglasses out of his suit pocket and put them on. Lora giggled. Reno shamelessly abandoned his partner and speed walked away.

—

“Hello, my dear.”

Lora looked up, blinking at the strange man who’d addressed her. “Hello,” she said cheerfully. She was, technically, breaking the rules by wandering around like this, but she was just so curious. There were so many strange things in this place! And sometimes breaking the rules led to wonderful things, like coming here.

“Would you like to see something interesting?”

She gasped in delight. “Yes! What is it?”

“Come with me and I’ll show you,” he said, offering a hand. She took it without hesitation. It was weirdly cold. The man reminded her of her uncle Brutus, who stared at her all the time and Mama always glared at. Uncle Brutus was weird.

She remembered that she actually had to introduce herself here, because people didn’t automatically know her name. “I’m Lora, what’s your name?” she said.

The man smiled. “You can call me Professor Hojo, my dear.”

[Part 2]

[sxveme-2]

blueberry pancakes // bucky barnes

MASTERLIST

Description: A single mother. Juggling being a mom, a full time pediatrician, and a difficult ex who believed now would be the best time to finally be a father. A soldier ripped out of time. Ex-assassin turned superhero. Learning how to balance a new domestic life with handling demons of his past, while facing the trials of the future. a love story began over something as simple as chocolate chip pancakes with hidden blueberries.

Disclaimer: I do not own any original Marvel characters! All canon plots and canon characters belong to Marvel Comics and Marvel Studios. This is an original work. You may not publish it anywhere else

Status: Edited

Note: Takes place after endgame. I have elected to ignore Tony's death and Steve's leaving. Did not happen. Quick Reminder! My works are only published here, AO3 and on Wattpad, thank you.

Chapter Five: The One with the Burnt Pancakes

Warnings: N/A

Word Count: 2516

    Coming out of a divorce unscathed was more uncommon than its counterpart. Typically, a bit of baggage attaches itself to one or both parties. No matter whether or not divorce rates are through the roof in today's modern era, it still hurt more than words could describe. Especially when it's due to an affair. It creates this sense of unworthiness, and as though you weren't good enough. And when the pair has a child, it makes it ten times more difficult. Knowing that you'll have to break it to the child that their parents will no longer be together, and that they will most likely spend more time with one in comparison to the other.

But, when your child already has a bit of distaste towards your partner, it can make the blow a little softer. Sure, every mother wants their child to have a relationship with their father, other mom, etc. Whatever the situation is, parents, want that. They want to be able to see their child's face when they see their ex-spouse, but sometimes, there's nothing you can do about it. Especially when your ex never put in the effort, to begin with.

Above all, your perception of love changes. and that's exactly what happened to Lily. She lost all belief in herself and didn't believe she could ever find someone who would love her, along with the baggage that she carried alongside her. And that broken heart that she has yet to mend, and honestly, she wasn't sure if she'd ever find someone who could help. To cup warm hands around the two halves and hold them together until they combined once again.

Other things she deemed impossible, was her sitting in a kitchen with the avengers. Earth’s mightiest heroes. The people that destroyed an entire army. travelled to space. Some even having been ripped out of time and thrown into different roles and periods. These people had stories people couldn't even dream of, lived lives people only wished to be able to experience. And here sat Lily, a single mother of an 11-year-old boy, who lived in a domestic area, and worked as a pediatrician. She was minuscule in comparison to the Gods and soldiers that sat around her.

"So, is Hunter’s father around?" a soft voice asked, an accent dripping from the words. It had pulled Lily out of her thoughts of astonishment, as she tried to wrap her head around what was currently happening.

"Hm? Oh, no," Lily spoke, her voice as soft as the gentle ripple of a pond, while she sipped the coffee they had given her. Glancing up, a few of the superheroes looked at her with inquisitive eyes, wondering where he may be, or if he even was to be anymore, "We uh, we divorced four years ago."

"I'm sorry to hear that," the girl continued. Lily had placed her as Scarlet Witch, or Wanda Maximoff. Hunter adored her. He ranted and raved about how cool her abilities were and how she could probably take down an entire army by herself if she wanted to, "He's cute. I've always wanted kids."

Lily nodded along as the conversation continued around her. She stayed as silent as a sleeping lamb, her green eyes glancing around as she tapped her fingers against her coffee mug. She wasn't sure what they wanted her to say. It had been proven time and time again that Lily was the farthest from a talker. Deep inside of her mind, the little voice of self-doubt had convinced her that no one cared about what she had to say. That the only reason people even spoke to her, to begin with, was because it was polite. But she's also been told that the world around her found that shy demeanour endearing, and mysterious. As if she held secrets behind those sealed lips when in reality, Lily was scared that if she spoke, she'd create secrets. Letting the world in on the pain she hid, that she kept locked away in a vault deep within her mind. protecting herself from being destroyed again.

"...So if you ever need a babysitter," Wanda’s voice sang again, yanking Lily away from her deeper thoughts once again, as though the two were tethered. the young blonde's attention perked up as the young girl continued speaking, "I'm your girl."

Was the Scarlet Witch, offering to babysit Lily's eleven-year-old? As in, seriously? Like to pick him up or come down from upstate New York to deliberately take care of him? If it weren't for the fact Lily rarely left the house, and if she did, it was with Hunter, she may have considered the idea. But Lily wasn't one to go out. The noise that came along with the idea of partying or going out on the town always got Lily's heart beating at a much too fast pace. If she was going out, it was to gen's cafe, or with three glasses of wine down and a whole bottle to go. The world was loud and intimidating, and could easily crush Lily's fragile heart and mind with a simple touch. And where would that lead her? Nowhere good, that's where.

"Oh that's sweet, but I don't typically go out, and when I do, he comes with," Lily stated, lips forming a tight smile as she ran her finger along the circular hole atop her mug.

"Really? A girl that's as beautiful as you must get tons of guys and go out on dates. and I see no ring on that finger," the infamous Tony Stark teased while shifting his weight to look at the blonde, "unless there's already a lucky fella."

A laugh of almost disbelief escaped through Lily's full lips as if the idea of Tony Stark calling her beautiful was too good to be true, "Oh no. my best friend tries but I don't date. Already have my hands full with work and Hunter."

"Where do you work?" Steve's voice now chimed in, pushing off the counter he leaned on as Bucky worked away, staying silent. He hadn't spoken a word to Lily since Steve walked her through the threshold of the kitchen, merely a gruff hi before returning to the feverish work he was doing on the pancakes. It was as though he was trying to make them perfect.

"I'm a pediatrician at Mount Sinai Kravis Children's Hospital down in Manhattan," Lily answered, her eyes averting from looking at any of the intimidating people around her. Why were they so interested in her? Why did they seriously care so much about her personal life? She just brought Hunter here for a tour, not an interrogation...was this what people did? Like...they wanted to learn more about her? It didn't make sense, she was pretty basic. There was nothing special to her, Lily thought.

"Oh, that's awesome. I have a few-"

"SHIT!"

The large outburst caused everybody to immediately turn their attention to where it came from. Behind the counter, Bucky was waving smoke away from his face that seemed to be billowing from the pan on the stove. He burnt the pancakes. Lily felt a small smile tug at the corners of her lips as she watched him throw a towel at the counter, his face turning a crisp shade of red, like a cherry. The moment his eyes landed on her though, his entire body lit up in a hue of pink it seemed. He grew flustered, biting down on this ever so soft lips he had. Lily was only human, she couldn't help but avert her eyes down to the thin layer of skin. And as if on cue, Wanda let her voice ring through the kitchen.

"Damn it, Barnes! I told you not to cook, and you decide to challenge your abilities in front of our guest?" The ginger exclaimed while standing from her chair, going to help the built man clean his mess.

A few of the others in the room whined, and Lily guessed they had been waiting for a bit to eat. She felt a twang of guilt deep within her, as though it was her fault. But it really wasn't, she wasn't the one making the pancakes. no, she was merely answering the personal questions they all seemed to have for her, as well as constantly glancing at the hall or behind her to see if Hunter was on his way back. Instead, he was now outside with Sam, looking at all of the different artifacts and things that weren't able to be kept inside of the compound.

"You much of a chef, Lily?" James Rhodes (Warmachine, she reminded herself), asked. No matter the amount of mental effort it took, Lily couldn't help but allow the tinge of rose to decorate her full cheeks. They seemed to want to get to know her, and she felt almost...accepted? No, maybe more so welcomed, by these beings of immense power and ability. She allowed her shoulders to relax, and her grip on her mug lessened.

"Nothing impressive, but I do know my way around a kitchen," she responded, tilting her head to the side, causing her blonde locks to dance across her shoulder, "Most nights, I try to make homemade meals for Hunt and I. It's important for a child's development." she finished but noticed how all of their eyes were glued to her. Raising her left eyebrow ever so gently, she let a giggle escape from her throat, "but sometimes I give in and order pizza."

"You should help Bucky out, he's never been the best cook. Got used to boiling everything in the forties, so he makes a mean hot dog," Steve teased, sauntering over in all of his Captain America excellence, "Anything else? Completely lost on him."

"It's a good skill to have. But difficult to master, I suppose." Lily shrugged, crossing her legs over one another as she rested her elbow on the glass table, cupping her chin as she sipped the hot liquid in her cup. She couldn't seem, however, to take her eyes off of the culprit of the burnt pancake smell. The way the muscles in his neck rippled whenever he clenched his jaw. How his metal arm glinted as a small stream of light entered through a window, creating a bright reflection. How his scruff along his chiselled chin seemed to be a bit overgrown underneath.

Her mind began to wander momentarily, a gentle and soft vision dancing itself into her brain. Him sitting on a chair in her bathroom, Lily sitting comfortably on his lap, facing him. His eyes sleepy and his hair unkempt. Her skilled and nimble hand resting on the side of his face as she trimmed underneath his jaw, getting those areas he seemed to miss. His lips parted as he seemed to slowly drift off again, as though Lily's gentle hands were willing him to...

A hand waving in front of her face snatched Lily out of her odd fantasy land. She cleared her throat and looked around her, eyebrows knitting together in confusion, as though she had been paying attention to the whole conversation she just missed. Holding her lips inside of her mouth, Lily shifted once again in her seat, attempting to play it cool as the blush that had formed on her cheeks seemed to grow rapidly.

"Sorry, could you repeat what you said?" she asked, her voice weak as her eyes shifted to look at the man behind the counter once again. She couldn't help it...he was beautiful.

"I said you should help Buck out making the pancakes. Most of us haven't eaten, and if you're as good as you say, maybe you can help." Steve grinned, a knowing glint in his sky blue eyes. The way he looked at Lily, as though he could see inside of her head, sent a shiver down her spine. The idea of anyone knowing where her mind just wandered was basically mortifying for her. Being such a conservative person, the idea of that getting out? Yeah, no.

"Oh no I shouldn't...I'm positive he's capable of making pancakes." Lily chuckled, her voice cracking halfway through. This caught everyone's interest, and Lily had to hide her face with her mug as the dark liquid slid its way down her throat.

"He isn't. We don't normally let him in the kitchen. C'mon Lily, show us whatcha got." Steve continued to pry, leaning back in his chair as the others encouraged the entire idea.

Lily's head turned back to where Bucky stood, an almost pleading yet bashful look gracing his perfectly sculpted features. Just the way his eyes seemed to call out for her, was enough to allow the eldest Osborne to give in to the peer pressure of her new acquaintances. That was something Lily believed to be impossible, being friends with these heroes. These people that laid their life on the ground multiple times, saving her and her son by protecting the world around them. She was in debt to this group, everybody was. They've kept them protected for countless years. But how would one even begin to thank them?

"Okay okay, I'll do it," Lily mumbled, finishing her drink before pushing herself out of the chair that probably cost the same amount as her dog. She pulled a hair tie from her wrist and securing the blonde locks at the nape of her neck as she gracefully floated towards the kitchen. Glancing around, she couldn't help but let out a laugh at how expensive the items around her were. Sure, she didn't live in a house with run-down appliances, but these were top-of-the-line, high-end, see-on Food Channel things. A far reach from Lily's budget, "Well, first of all, Bucky, you need to turn on the fan."

After preparing everything to ensure not only safety but also to optimize space and time, Lily turned towards the man she had just moments ago daydreamed of. For a moment, she found herself lost in those steel-blue eyes he had. As though he had captured the moon and made them his own, adding a tinge of the blue from the sky above. How with every flicker across her face, a story was told. The pain and suffering he had endured etched into the dips and creases of his face, especially around those beautiful orbs. A part of her wished that the other members of the group were gone and that she could grip the sides of his face and kiss those lips he kept licking. His tongue darting out to wet them, creating a slight chapped ring around the pink layer of skin.

"Hey if you two are done gazing into the eyes of each other and looking like Hollister models, the rest of us are hungry." Starks’s voice rang, snapping Lily out of the trance the ex-soldier had put her under for a few seconds.

"I have no idea what you're talking about, coke can," Bucky muttered while turning his gaze away from Lily's and focused on washing the blueberries, "I'm just cleaning fruit."